By Doron Youngerwood, VP Marketing at Core6
Enterprise storage and backup systems sit at the foundation of business continuity, cyber recovery, and compliance.
But as AI reshapes the threat landscape, these systems are rapidly becoming some of the most attractive – and vulnerable – targets in the environment.
AI is accelerating every stage of cyberattacks.
Threat actors can now map environments instantly, detect misconfigurations, generate tailored exploits, and move laterally at a speed traditional defenses weren’t built to handle.
Storage and backup systems are right in the blast radius.
They protect the data.
They enable recovery.
And if compromised, they can determine whether a business survives a cyber event – or not.
Storage & Backup Infrastructure: A High-Value Target
At the core of every organization is its data infrastructure.
Storage and backup platforms hold sensitive information, support thousands of workloads, and underpin cyber recovery strategies.
They’ve always been high-value targets, but AI changes the equation.
What once took days or weeks – deep reconnaissance, identifying subtle configuration flaws – can now happen in minutes.
Attackers don’t just find the obvious gaps anymore.
They uncover the small, overlooked misconfigurations that create real risk.
The impact is simple:
A compromised storage or backup environment can bring an entire organization to a halt.
What Needs to Change
Periodic audits and occasional assessments are no longer enough.
Security and Storage teams need to shift to continuous – and autonomous – security posture management:
- Find issues faster
- Prioritize what actually matters
- Remediate before attackers exploit them
In short:
You need to identify more issues, and fix them faster.
Two Practical Steps to Strengthen Your Environment
1. Build a Secure Configuration Baseline
Define what “secure” looks like for each platform—across vendors like Dell, NetApp, Rubrik, Cohesity, Hitachi Vantara, and others.
A strong baseline should:
- Reflect vendor best practices
- Incorporate real-world attack patterns
- Cover both system configuration and security controls
- Be reviewed and updated regularly
2. Perform Continuous Gap Assessments
Identify what’s missing, misconfigured, or drifting over time.
Focus on these 3 key areas:
Vulnerability & Patch Management
- Can you scan storage and backup systems effectively?
- Do you support authenticated, platform-specific scanning?
- Can you validate that patches and fixes actually worked?
- Do you have a complete, accurate asset inventory?
Configuration Compliance & Drift
- Do you have defined target configurations?
- Can you continuously detect drift from those baselines?
Knowledge & Expertise
- Do you have the expertise to secure each storage & backup platform?
- Are you aligned with the latest hardening guidance and best practices?
Gap assessments consistently surface risks that teams didn’t know existed, and can’t afford to ignore.
The Bottom Line
AI is accelerating both offense and defense.
Attackers are moving faster.
Defenders need to move faster, too.
That means:
- Continuous posture management
- Automated remediation
- Simpler, faster security workflows
These are no longer “nice to have.”
They’re becoming essential.
Solutions like StorageGuard help security and storage teams secure what matters most – ensuring critical data systems remain resilient, compliant, and ready to recover, even as threats evolve at machine speed.
“That’s what I appreciate about solutions like StorageGuard, which I’ve used for three years. It gets inside the perimeter to scan storage and SAN. Those are areas other tools just don’t touch,” Kevin Battle, Senior Storage Engineer at Charter Communications
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Doron Youngerwood is the VP Marketing at Core6.
Built on two decades of expertise, Core6 (formerly ‘Continuity Software’) secures enterprise data infrastructure through autonomous security controls that protect storage and backup environments against security misconfigurations and exposure.
