IBM has an AI SSD that can detect and eradicate ransomware in 60 seconds, but you’re fooling yourself if you think you can buy this and plug it into your PC
IBM has launched an AI-powered SSD that can identify and neutralize ransomware threats in less than a minute. However, consumers should not expect to purchase this technology for personal use anytime soon.
According to a November 2023 report from TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, 89% of organizations consider ransomware to be a top five existential threat. Furthermore, a 2024 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index Report suggests that as the AI market matures, AI itself could become a new attack surface for cybercriminals.
In response to these growing threats, IBM has launched AI-enhanced versions of its FlashCore Module (FCM) technology. FCMs are proprietary flash drives used in IBM FlashSystem 5000 and Storwize arrays that enable real-time detection of ransomware and other attacks.
Making organizations more data resilient
IBM’s newly available fourth-generation technology, FCM4, enables AI capabilities within the IBM Storage FlashSystem, meaning it can continuously monitor metrics of every single I/O using machine learning models, reportedly helping it prevent ransomware and can detect other threats in less than 60 years. seconds. The sooner companies can become aware of attacks, the sooner they can take action, potentially leading to faster recovery.
These tools are included in new IBM Storage FlashSystem products and a new version of IBM Storage Defender software and are intended to improve organizations’ ability to detect and respond to a wide range of cyber threats.
The IBM Storage Defender software includes Cohesity’s DataProtect and Index Engines’ CyberSense and promises end-to-end data resilience in hybrid multi-cloud IT environments. This new version expands the software’s threat detection capabilities to make it much more useful and, in IBM’s words, “help build copy reliability as a foundation for teams to begin recovering from cyberattacks.”
Sam Werner, VP, IBM Storage Product Management said: “Individually, both FlashSystem and Defender have capabilities that can help organizations become more data resilient, but together they are even better. For example, storage administrators can now create security groups that contain specific volumes and are automatically backed up according to user-defined policies. Immutable copies of data can now be recovered or recovered from multiple target locations, including different locations when recovering from a cyber attack. Additionally, immutable copies can be replicated to another IBM Storage Defender cluster for an additional layer of protection.”
Blocks and files points out that while popular SSD vendors like Micron, Samsung, and Western Digital could add similar AI scanning of SSD IOs in real time, they would have to send the attack alerts upstream to a system management resource to respond to the alerts. That’s not a problem for IBM, as Storage Defender is the resource for its customers.