N-able, Inc. announced Fortified Copies from Cove Data Protection. With this update, Cove has taken a fresh approach to backup immutability-adding another layer of protection for servers, workstations, and Microsoft 365 backups. Immutability is built into the Cove architecture as an automatic feature, with no additional management or cost impact.

A recent study by Sophos found that 94% of ransomware victims have their backups targeted by attackers, making immutability more relevant than ever. Fortified Copies are immutable backups that cannot be altered or deleted by threat actors, because there is no way to access them via Cove's management console, application programming interface (API), or command line interface (CLI). Fortified Copies are automatically created hourly across all backups and devices and retained for 30 days with no manual intervention needed.

Immutability became a hot topic in the data protection space when ransomware groups started targeting backups to thwart victims' recovery attempts. However, the methods currently available (such as WORM locking, object storage) to provide immutability for traditional local-first backups can incur significant storage and administrative costs associated with data retention, expiration, and cleanup. These methods also cannot protect against lower-level attacks, such as a factory reset of an entire storage system.

Cove's architecture is more cyber resilient than legacy backup solutions, because primary backup storage is already off the local network, in an N-able worldwide private cloud. Fortified Copies adds yet another layer of protection.

"With Fortified Copies, we've essentially automated backup immutability," said Stefan Voss, Vice President of Product Management for Cove Data Protection. "Unlike other solutions, there's nothing to manage. You don't need to make choices about which devices or data sources ‘deserve' immutability or configure complex retention policies. It's another classic example of how Cove makes MSPs' and IT pros' lives easier."

This announcement further expands the N-able Ecoverse vision, which we believe is harmonizing and transforming the management of modern IT, allowing MSPs to be more efficient, resilient, and drive more opportunities through an open, unified ecosystem. To learn more about Cove, visit https://www.n-able.com/products/cove-data-protection.