The News: Cohesity DataHawk, a single-SKU, software-as-a-service (SaaS)-delivered bundle of Cohesity and BigID cyber-resiliency capabilities, becomes generally available. Cohesity also introduces its Security Advisor Council and its Data Security Alliance. See more from Cohesity here.
Analyst Take: News of Cohesity DataHawk entering general availability and the announcement around its Data Security Alliance represent an effort to cultivate and integrate a broader stack of software capabilities for cyber resiliency. This is a timely move, as the barrage of cyber attacks is never-ending and IT Operations teams face executive-level pressure to be prepared to mitigate business downtime and data loss in the likely event that their organization falls victim to innovative and adaptive attackers.
There are challenges that IT teams face, however. IT needs to become more preventative, and at the same time, IT Operations must be prepared to respond more quickly. The problem is that IT Operations teams are struggling to respond because of significant and ongoing staffing limitations.
To assist IT operations with identifying threats, assessing the impact of attacks, and taking remedial action, data protection vendors are baking analytics and machine learning capabilities into their software. A comprehensive security strategy requires tools and technologies from multiple vendors, though which adds further complexity for IT Operations teams that are already strapped.
That’s where I see Cohesity DataHawk as playing a valuable role in the transformation of data security and management using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Cohesity DataHawk includes cyber-attack prevention, and has the ability to identify impacted data and subsequent good data changes that need to be preserved, and accelerate attack remediation and recovery. Specifically, Cohesity DataHawk utilizes Cohesity DataProtect’s ability to scan for anomalies and potential threats, rich data classification via BigID, and Cohesity FortKnox for data vaulting. It is delivered under a single pane of glass via Cohesity Helios.
–DataProtect scans backup data for anomalous activity as well as for known vulnerabilities using a machine learning-based detection that, according to Cohesity, is kept up-to-date daily with over 100,000 Indicators of Compromise (IoC).
–Machine learning is also used for data discovery and classification, with the BigID technology using more than 200 built-in classifiers and ML algorithms to analyze, tag, categorize, label, and classify data sets. These capabilities address a crucial challenge with cyber-attack recovery that IT operations teams have, which is the ability to understand the impact of an attack. BigID includes predefined policies for data privacy regulations GDPR and HIPAA, making it easier for IT Operations to discern if sensitive data has been compromised.
–Finally, Cohesity FortKnox, which Evaluator Group recently audited, provides an as-a-Service delivered, operationally air-gapped data recovery vault.
Cohesity’s partner-supported model is also evidenced in the launch of its Data Security Alliance (with inaugural members BigID, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Mandiant, Palo Alto Networks, PwC UK, Seucronix, Splunk and Tenable), its extensible API integration with these and other third-party software providers, and its alliance with IBM for IBM Storage Defender, which integrates DataProtect with IBM Storage Protect, Storage Fusion and Storage FlashSystem for AI-supported event monitoring and cyber-recovery.
Cohesity’s increasingly ecosystem-led approach is beneficial to IT Operations from the standpoint of streamlining the cultivation and integration of a well-rounded cyber resiliency stack. The success of the approach will be largely predicated upon not only the network of partners that Cohesity continues to cultivate, but also its ability to help IT Operations navigate the growing roster of available integrations to address their organization’s specific requirements.
Cohesity DataProtect Product Brief
Lab Insight Report: Validation of Cohesity FortKnox
Disclosure: Evaluator Group, wholly owned by The Futurum Group, is a research and analyst firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article. Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually.
