Rubrik Launches Cloud-Hosted NAS Backup Service to Simplify Data Protection
Rubrik introduces a new service that stores on-premise NAS backups in isolated, immutable cloud vaults, eliminating the need for customers to manage local backup storage infrastructure.
Rubrik has unveiled Rubrik-Hosted Protection for On-Premise Unstructured Data, a new service designed to streamline the protection of critical Network Attached Storage (NAS) data for enterprises. This offering, built upon Rubrik's existing NAS Cloud Direct service, allows organizations to safeguard their unstructured data without the burden of managing their own on-premises backup storage hardware. By shifting the storage and orchestration responsibilities to Rubrik's cloud, the company aims to reduce infrastructure friction and ensure reliable recovery capabilities.
Modern businesses increasingly rely on vast amounts of unstructured data, such as medical scans, design assets, and AI datasets, which are both costly to recreate and critical for operations. The loss or ransomware encryption of this data can bring dependent applications to a standstill. Traditionally, protecting this data on-premises required significant investment in purchasing, deploying, and maintaining dedicated backup storage infrastructure. However, with the escalating costs of hardware and the rapid acceleration of AI initiatives, many enterprises face difficult choices between security budgets and essential infrastructure upgrades.
Rubrik-Hosted Protection directly addresses these challenges. The service operates the backup storage, capacity, and updates within Rubrik's cloud environment. Customers only need to deploy lightweight software components, known as data movers, on their existing servers. These movers connect their NAS systems to Rubrik's cloud, eliminating the need for bulky on-premises backup servers or large appliances. This approach allows security teams to focus on policy management and recovery through the Rubrik Security Cloud interface, abstracting away the underlying infrastructure complexities.
A key feature of the new service is the storage of backups in isolated and immutable vaults. Each backup is stored in a separate Rubrik identity domain within the Rubrik-hosted vault, protected by retention lock. Crucially, the design prevents production administrator credentials from accessing or deleting these backups, offering a robust defense against insider threats and ransomware attacks that often target backup data.
The solution also incorporates built-in ransomware detection capabilities. Anomaly detection runs on every backup, analyzing file entropy and change patterns without requiring a secondary scan or additional tools. This feature aids threat hunting by identifying safe recovery points within the backup history, which is vital for restoring operations after an incident.
Furthermore, Rubrik-Hosted Protection includes sensitive data discovery and classification features. By scanning primary file shares directly, organizations can identify and locate sensitive data. This allows them to apply appropriate protection policies, including retention lock and legal hold, to critical assets, thereby assisting regulated industries in meeting audit and compliance requirements.
The service also offers enhanced data mobility and recovery options. Customers can protect data across a heterogeneous environment of storage vendors through a unified policy. Recoveries can be directed to different arrays, cloud storage, or into an isolated recovery environment (IRE) for safe testing. Additionally, the Copy and Migrate functionality enables users to move NAS data across platforms, secondary sites, or cloud storage on a scheduled basis, with protection policies applied directly within Rubrik Security Cloud at the destination.