Solutions
Having backups is not the same as having a recovery position.
Immutable snapshots that an attacker with credentials cannot alter, geographically separated copies in EU data centres, and in-line reduction that makes long retention affordable.
- Immutable snapshots
- EU data residency
- FIDO2 MFA on Vault drives
The problem
The backup that fails is the one taken by an account the attacker owns.
Modern ransomware does not begin with encryption. It begins with credentials, then reconnaissance, then the deliberate destruction of recovery options — because an organisation that can restore does not pay.
Which means the question is not whether backups run. It is whether the backup can be altered or deleted by an account an attacker has already compromised. If it can, it is a copy, not a recovery position.
Long-term retention has a quieter problem. Retention obligations are set in years, capacity grows every year, and the cost of holding data nobody reads is rarely revisited once the system is in place.
What STORViX does about it
Immutability on site, separation off site, reduction throughout.
Three mechanisms, each doing a distinct job: snapshots that cannot be rewritten, copies that are not in the same building, and reduction that makes the whole thing affordable.
Copy-on-write immutable snapshots
AiRE's transactional model produces point-in-time snapshots that cannot be altered once taken. Recovery from a ransomware event is a revert to a known-good point rather than a restore from a separate system.
- Immutable once taken
- Instant recovery
- Instant clones with no extra space
Block-level incremental replication
Snapshots replicate at the block level, synchronising only the differences. That is what makes frequent off-site copies practical rather than aspirational.
- Deltas only
- Minimal bandwidth
- On-site and off-site targets
Vault, in geographically separated EU facilities
One-way replication into STORViX-operated data centres in Sweden, Italy and other EU countries, protecting against site-specific disasters. STORViX states a cost reduction of up to 50% against comparable cloud archive.
- One-way replication — a compromised source cannot reach back
- SHA AES 256 at rest
- FIDO2 multi-factor authentication on physical drives
- Zero-knowledge privacy policy and DPA
Recovery over the wire or by courier
Data can be recovered from Vault over the network, or by having the physical drives shipped. When the recovery objective is measured in terabytes and hours, the second option is sometimes the faster one.
- Network recovery
- Shipped physical drives
- EU facilities throughout
DRaaS for orchestrated recovery
Disaster Recovery as a Service runs on Vault infrastructure and restores IT function rather than merely returning files. Recovery objectives and runbooks are agreed per engagement.
- Runs on the Vault estate
- Orchestrated, not raw restore
- Scoped per engagement
In-line reduction, applied per data set
Deduplication with 256-bit checksums and compression via LZ4 or GZIP9 happen during the write. Archive data sets can carry maximum compression while primary data sets do not.
- Per-data-set control
- GZIP9 where density matters
- Published customer factors of 2× and 3×
Outcomes
What changes in practice
A recovery position, not just a copy
Immutability means the recovery path survives an attacker who already has administrative credentials.
Off-site copies you can afford to take often
Sending only block-level deltas changes replication frequency from a bandwidth negotiation into a policy decision.
Retention cost that scales with reduction
Archive data sets configured for maximum density hold more per usable terabyte, which is what makes a decade of retention a manageable line item.
Jurisdiction you can point to
Vault copies sit in named EU countries under a zero-knowledge policy — an answer to an auditor's question, not a shrug toward a region setting.
Design the recovery position, then the backup.
Start from what has to be recoverable, how quickly, and who must not be able to alter it. The retention design follows from that, rather than the other way round.