Immutable Backups

An immutable backup secures data by making it non-rewritable and non-erasable. As a result, it provides extra security by prohibiting accidental data deletion or ransomware attacks. Once data is written, it cannot be altered or overwritten by some virus, ransomware, or other malicious software.

Immutability ensures that your data remains safe and recoverable at any time.

To comply with data security standards, FalconStor StorSafe offers backup immutability features. These features adhere to widely recognized governmental and industry requirements for compliance.

FalconStor StorSafe includes the following immutable backup features:

WORM

With StorSafe, the Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) property can be enabled for a virtual tape library drive, aka disk based storage. WORM ensures the data cannot be overwritten by even the backup software. You can export the virtual WORM capabilities to physical WORM tapes or to cloud object storage where they will maintain the WORM property to support secure data archival.

Immutable Object Storage

Immutable Object Storage locks data to provide a safe backup and to maintain data integrity. Using FalconStor StorSafe with IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS), you can enable object lock at the bucket level to get secure backups and long-term data retention. IBM Retention policies for an immutable bucket ensure that data is stored in a non-erasable and non-rewritable manner for a specified timeframe. Data cannot be changed until the retention period has expired. Once the retention period is over, data can be unlocked for further actions according to your company policies.

Typically, customers who require backups with long retentions ask for annual backups to have a seven-year retention. In most cases there is a regulatory requirement to keep data for this period. From the IBM COS management GUI, you can configure the retention policy of your bucket and set the minimum and default values to zero, and the maximum retention period to the number of days you want to lock the bucket data.

From the FalconStor management GUI, you can add a tape migration policy for a VTL or drive. At the end of each backup job, the virtual tape is ejected to the vault, where the tape data gets packaged and migrated to the object storage of a cloud provider. This copy of data remains intact during the retention period defined for the immutable bucket and is protected from unforeseen malicious activity or accidental deletion.