How to Keep Your Cyber Vault and Backup Systems Hardened – From Day One and Beyond

Ransomware isn’t slowing down – and for many organizations, the cyber vault has become the last line of defense. But here’s the catch: vaulted storage and backup systems aren’t secure out of the box. They need to be properly hardened and kept that way, to make sure that when the time comes, your “last good copy” is actually good.

Hardening From the Get-Go

A hardened environment doesn’t happen automatically. You’ve got to start with a solid hardening guide for each of the vaulted platforms and implement hundreds of configurations, such as:

• Keep backup systems off the domain
• Require multi-factor authentication (MFA)
• Enforce dual control for sensitive actions
• Apply access control lists (ACLs) and least privilege
• Use dedicated user accounts for backup software and targets
• Practice good secret management and session limits
• Configure secure snapshots or immutable backup copies
• Secure time synchronization
• And many other hardening configurations

It’s all about layering controls so no single mistake becomes a breach.

It Can Be Configured – It Just Isn’t

Facts check – Manufacturers of vaulted storage & backup solutions almost always:

• Publish hardening guides.
• Expect customers to review, decide on, and implement dozens of additional settings per system—on top of standard configuration.
• Place responsibility on the customer to configure the solution in accordance with the hardening guide.
• Place responsibility on the customer to harden any integrated components inside the vault (e.g.,networking, backup, recovery, storage) according to security standards and best practices.
• There are valid reasons for this—some security settings can affect operational efficiency or performance and add cost in dollars, time, and effort—and organizations differ in how much of that trade-off they’ll accept.

I call this the “can be configured” syndrome—where vendors bury what’s possible across multiple documents and expect customers to find, interpret, and implement it themselves.

Vaults Often Cover A Subset – What About The Rest?

Let’s face it: not every system gets a vaulted backup. In fact, most companies only vault a small subset of their most critical systems. That’s usually because vaulting comes with real costs and complexity.

So what about everything else? The storage and backup systems that don’t live inside a vault still matter, and they can still be compromised if not properly hardened. That’s why it’s important to apply the same level of rigor across your broader storage and backup environment, not just selected few.

Preventing Configuration Drift and Ensuring Continuous Compliance

Even if you get the setup right, things drift. Systems change, patches get missed, new configurations sneak in and suddenly, the environment you hardened six months ago doesn’t look so tight anymore.

To stay ahead, you need to:

• Watch for configuration drift
• Audit your security controls regularly
• Find and prioritize security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities before attackers do

Continuous visibility and validation are the only ways to make sure your system hardening actually holds up over time.

The Unvaulted Need Strong Cyber Hygiene

Here’s where things get interesting. For systems without vaulted backups, strong security hygiene is everything. That means hardened configuration baselines, strict privileges, immutable backups, and dual authorization for any restore or delete actions, ACLs, IP filters, tight identify management, disabling unneeded services and many other hardening elements.

You might not have the same physical or network separation as a full cyber vault, but you can still create logical and procedural separation that delivers real protection.

StorageGuard: Hardening Made Simple

This is where StorageGuard helps. Our solution delivers automated hardening and continuous posture management for all enterprise storage and backup environments – both vaulted and non-vaulted.

• Quick deployment – software-only, agentless
• Simple setup – start identifying hardening opportunities immediately
• Actionable insights – instantly pinpoint security misconfigurations, vulnerabilities and compliance issues – along with remediation guidance
• Ongoing assurance – continuously monitor for config drift and enforce controls

With StorageGuard, enterprises can strengthen their cyber vaults and broader backup ecosystem quickly, efficiently, and at scale.