Data protector Cohesity is going to provide its data structures to OpenAI so that generative AI can be applied to threat and anomaly detection, potentially combating the ransomware plague.
Microsoft has invested in OpenAI and this Cohesity involvement is part of a suite of data protection integration activities between Cohesity and Microsoft, aimed at strengthening the appeal of Azure cloud services and Cohesity’s SaaS activities to enterprise customers. Microsoft has said it will invest $1 billion in Open AI and has gained exclusive rights to use OpenAI’s GPT-3 technology in its own products and services. Cohesity and Microsoft have also unveiled three product/service integrations and made two Cohesity services available on Azure.
Cohesity president and CEO Sanjay Poonen supplied a quote: “Cohesity is integrating with Microsoft’s broad platforms across security, cloud and AI – all in order to help joint customers secure and protect their data against escalating cyberattacks.
“This expanded collaboration will make it simple for thousands of Microsoft customers and ecosystem partners to access Cohesity’s award-winning platform.”
The three integrations are:
- Cohesity’s DataProtect backup and recovery on-prem product and backup as a service offering, boh integrate with Microsoft Sentinel, a cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) platform.
- Cohesity integrates the Azure Active Directory and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to manage and access Cohesity products, including Cohesity Data Cloud and Cohesity Cloud Services.
- Cohesity data classification is powered by BigID and BigID has integrated with Microsoft Purview to provide data discovery, privacy, security and governance intelligence.
Cohesity’s Fort Knox SaaS cyber vaulting offering is now available on Azure in preview form with general availability due in months. The Cohesity DataProtect Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) offering supports Microsoft 365 and customers’ M365 data can be backed up to an Azure target destination.
Poonen’s company says it is already using AI to help customers detect anomalies indicative of an operating cyberattack, and believes AI can be used to analyze vast volumes of data at speed. It could enable IT and security operations to detect and respond to a security breach faster, with improved accuracy, and in a more rounded way, the firm claims.
Having an AI tool operate within a Cohesity data structure to better detect and respond to ransomware and other malware attacks could be a large improvement on current approaches.
Phil Goodwin, an IDC research VP, said: “We think integrating with Microsoft Azure will help Cohesity and its customers to stay a step ahead of cyber criminals through more intelligent security now and with other interesting use cases to follow.”
It will also help Cohesity make progress against competition from Rubrik and other cyber-security suppliers. A Cohesity-Microsoft webinar will provide more information about the two’s integration and joint AI activities.
