Echola Systems: 20-Port Air Gap Switch to Address 25/100 GbE Servers and Storage Markets

To defend against today’s ransomware attacks, organizations should have backup storage isolation and a fast recovery strategy.

According to the federal regulatory agency FFIEC, “An air-gapped backup architecture limits exposure to a cyber attack and allows for data restoration to a point in time before the attack began.”

The Echola Systems LLC’ VFC2011 series optical switch provides a physical layer (L1) isolation for critical backup storage with a less than 10ms switching speed. The VFC2011 switch is a 20-port VOA-based fiber-cut optical switch with standard LC connectors. Since these are L1 switches, they don’t require expensive transceivers, and it directly connects to your network equipment transceivers that need protection vs. ransomware attacks.

Each port of VFC2011 can support up to 100GbE speed and comes with single-mode and multi-mode optics and connector options. For example, in a bi-directional isolation scenario, one VFC2011 can support up to 10 NAS nodes of 25GbE or 5 NAS nodes of 100GbE (4-lanes with breakout cables). It also provides a 100Mb/s port for management connectivity and supports REST APIs over a secured HTTPS connection.

The company recommends complementing their air gap switch with an immutable DBR tool and a ransomware detection tool called ‘Network Detection and Response’. In addition, you can refer to the following post, ‘A Real Air Gap Defense Against Today’s Ransomware Attacks,’ for an air gap implementation using the VFC2011-SM switch in a clustered NAS environment.

About Echola Systems:
It specialized in designing and manufacturing custom physical layer optical switches since 2006. The company’s products bring cost-effective solutions to instrumentation and test automation market users. Specifically, they address the custom needs of users in industries such as telecoms, equipment manufacturers, academic and research institutions. Typical applications include optical device sharing in test labs, patch panel automation, and optical layer fault simulation. Its customers include Cisco, Dell Technologies, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Ciena.