3 Data Protection Solutions Where AI Found Home

Published on April 11, 2024, this market report was written by Jerome M. Wendt, CEO and principal data protection analyst, Data Center Intelligence Group LLC (DCIG).

Infusing AI into data protection solutions has increasingly become the new benchmark by which organizations measure them. This trend reflects the demand from organizations for these solutions to both safeguard their data from cyber threats and gain new insights from their data. This had led at least 3 providers to already infuse AI into their respective data protection solutions.

Solution 1: Spin.AI SpinOne
Microsoft as a technology provides creates a cybersecure perimeter around Microsoft 365 to protect organizational data stored in it from possible cyber threats. However, Microsoft’s defenses alone do not account for every cyber threat that may threaten data stored in Micrsoft 365.

SpinOne with its AI-infused data protection complements Microsoft’s data protection features. It implements AI into its software to detect any form of suspicious activity in production Microsoft 365 data.

Operating as SaaS, it detects any anomalies in real time within the Microsft 365 accounts using AI. Should it detect any suspicious activity, it pinpoints and deals with it in one of numerous ways.

One of its responses includes isolating and locking down the user account to stop the ransomware from spreading. In other cases, it identifies infected or encrypted files or messages, removes them from productions, and restores protected files.

Using SpinOne’s AI-infused data protection software, businesses may see little or no impact from a ransomware attack.

Solution 2: RackTop Systems BrickStor
Founded in 2010 by the veterans of the U.S Intelligence Community, RackTop’s solution makes use of a zero trust architecture centered on data. The foundation of the BrickStor Security Platform (SP) is the idea that no one – not even “approved” workers, subcontractors, and support staff – should be given implicit trust.

This data-centric zero trust architecture utilizes AI to actively protect the data stored on it. It continuously monitors for and defends vs. ransomware, excessive file access, insider threats, unexpected data access, and data deletion.

The company also implements real-time and historical monitoring of user data activity alongside the zero trust architecture center. It captures the IP address, the user’s identity, and the full path to the user’s file.

Should an attack occur, the BrickStor Security Platform takes immediate action in response. It immediately generates an incident report. It then blocks any suspicious activity and restores any affected files in an attack.

Solution 3: Cohesity Gaia
Following closely on the heals of its announced acquisition of Veritas’ backup portfolio, Cohesity recently released Gaia.

It utilizes retrieval augmentation generation (RAG) technology built upon large language models (LLMs). In this case, Gaia will train itself using existing corporate backups as the LLM to help organizations query their data.

Using a conversational interface powered by AI, it seeks to provice contextual and valuable insights from existing corporate backups. While Gaia offers great promise, it remains in its early stages. Cohesity currently encourages organizations to be circumspect in the questions they ask Gaia and mindful of the responses it generates.

AI already finding home in data protection solutions
A provider simply saying it offers AI in its data protection solution has a great ring to it. However, cool features that have no practical use case quickly go the way of the Palm Pilot in organizations.

Spin.AI, RackTop Systems, and Cohesity have already found ways to make AI meaningful in today’s data protection solutions. Using AI to detect ransomware attacks, restore data if corrupted, and provide meaningful insights into backups gives us an early glimpse into the benefits that AI will provide in the not-too-distant future.