Partner POV | Why Cleanroom Recovery and Cyber Testing are Critical for Cyber Resilience

This article was created and contributed by our partner, Commvault.

Cyberattacks have evolved into a pervasive and sophisticated threat, posing a significant danger to organizations of all sizes. The ever-changing nature of cyber threats necessitates a new way of thinking when it comes to cyber resilience. Despite deploying the best perimeter security out there, the odds of bad actors getting in are very high. With that in mind, how can you help ensure that you can quickly recover when that day comes and, equally as important, how can you TEST your recovery in advance to make sure your plans are going to work?

Cleanroom Recovery, which we introduced in November, gives organizations the knowledge to help avert attacks, defend against bad actors, and restore environments to a secure state.

But, Cleanroom Recovery also provides a safe and isolated environment where organizations can easily test their cyber recovery plans without disrupting production systems. This environment allows organizations to identify and address gaps in their plans before an actual attack occurs. Cleanroom environments also provide forensic analysis of known infected systems and provide analysis that helps organizations understand the root cause of the attack—critical information to prevent future incidents.

Cleanroom Recovery should be a primary pillar in every organization's cyber resilience strategy.

Today's Cyber Recovery Reality: It's Not Easy

The frequency and severity of cyberattacks have escalated dramatically in recent years, posing a substantial threat to organizations across all industries. These attacks can have devastating consequences, including data breaches, financial losses, and irreparable reputational damage.

In a recent survey by The Futurum Group 98% of respondents indicated that data recoverability influences their resilience against ransomware attacks, with three-quarters of respondents suggesting that it is very or critically influential. Effective cyber recovery is crucial for organizations to minimize downtime, restore business operations, and safeguard their reputation after a cyberattack. However, many organizations struggle to adequately testtheir cyber recovery plans, leaving them vulnerable to real-world attacks.

In the evolving hybrid world, organizations must adhere to different legislative mandates that come into play. Specifically, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) frameworks have become top of mind for organizations. These legislative practices are mandating the requirements for testing, putting the responsibility on enterprises to be prepared with continuous testing that will help organizations avoid massive penalties and fines.

Organizations must continuously test their recovery approach to ensure a frictionless, rapid return to business operations.

The Limitations of Current Cyber Recovery Testing Approaches

Traditional cyber recovery testing methods, such as tabletop exercises, often fail to adequately prepare organizations for the complexities and chaos of real-life cyber recovery scenarios. These exercises typically involve discussions and simulations that lack the realism and urgency of an actual attack.

Moreover, testing cyber recovery plans in hybrid environments can be time-consuming, complex, and expensive. With workloads spread across multiple clouds, on-premises hypervisors, and physical servers, organizations must perform testing within each environment separately. True cyber resilience isn't solely a technological threshold that enterprises must hurdle; organizations must also understand its role in achieving true resilience.

With multiple teams and different silos, this is as much a business-critical endeavor as it is a technological necessity. Traditionally, IT domains operated separately, but for true cyber resilience, technology teams and lines of business must collaborate and converge efforts. Top-level executives must mandate organizations to build cyber security awareness and adopt best practices to ensure rapid recovery.

As business culture evolves to encourage more and more collaboration across teams, today's organizations are ready to embrace cleanroom recovery.

Commvault Cloud Cleanroom Recovery

In the face of the constant threat of cyber breaches, successful recovery hinges on the diligence of cyber testing and cyber resilience strategies.

Commvault Cloud's Cleanroom Recovery addresses a critical need for cyber readiness by providing a comprehensive testing and failover solution that enables organizations to more effectively mitigate risk.

Key features of Commvault Cloud's Cleanroom Recovery include:

• Comprehensive testing environment: Cleanroom Recovery provides a safe and isolated environment where organizations can test their cyber recovery plans without the risk of disrupting production systems.
• Secure forensic analysis: Cleanroom Recovery can be used to conduct forensic analysis of known infected systems and identify the root cause of an attack.
• Faster recovery times: Cleanroom Recovery can help organizations recover from cyberattacks more quickly by providing a streamlined recovery process.
• Reduced downtime: Cleanroom Recovery can help organizations minimize downtime by providing a production failover solution.

Cleanroom Recovery provides a safe and isolated environment for testing cyber recovery plans, conducting forensic analysis, and ensuring business continuity if a breach does occur. Cleanroom Recovery can help organizations improve their cyber resilience by providing benefits such as:

• Reduced risk of re-infection: Cleanroom Recovery provides a safe and isolated environment where workloads can be recovered without the risk of re-infection.
• Enhanced security: Cleanroom Recovery can be used to identify and address security vulnerabilities in cyber recovery plans.
• Simplified failover: Cleanroom Recovery can serve as a production failover solution in the event of a breach, ensuring that production operation recovery is conducted within a sanitized environment.

Use Cases for Cleanroom Recovery

Organizations can apply Cleanroom Recovery in several scenarios today to help ensure business operations continue without incident in the face of cyberattacks.

Testing Cyber Recovery Plans in a Hybrid Environment

Cleanroom Recovery simplifies and streamlines the process of testing cyber recovery plans in hybrid environments. With its any-to-any portability feature, Cleanroom Recovery allows organizations to recover workloads from multiple clouds, on-premises hypervisors, and physical servers to a common environment within the cleanroom. This eliminates the need to perform testing within each environment separately, saving time and resources.

Forensic Analysis of Known Infected Systems

In addition to cyber recovery testing, Cleanroom Recovery provides a secure environment for conducting forensic analysis of known infected systems. This analysis can help organizations identify the root cause of an attack, understand how the attackers gained access to their systems, and take steps to prevent future incidents.

Production Failover in the Event of a Breach

Cleanroom Recovery can serve as a production failover solution in the event of a breach. This means that if a cyberattack disrupts an organization's production systems, it can quickly and easily recover its workloads to a clean environment within the cleanroom. This can help organizations minimize downtime and get their business back up and running quickly.

Failure is Not an Option

In today's dynamic cybersecurity landscape, organizations must proactively address the ever-increasing threat of cyberattacks. Commvault Cloud's Cleanroom Recovery is a powerful tool for organizations to enhance their cyber resilience by providing a comprehensive testing environment, secure forensic analysis capabilities, and a production failover solution. By adopting Cleanroom Recovery, organizations can confidently test their cyber recovery plans, identify and remediate vulnerabilities, and ensure business continuity in the face of cyberattacks.