Commvault cuts Active Directory recovery to minutes

Commvault has introduced Active Directory Pre Recover, a tool designed to help organisations maintain access to identity services when cyberattacks disrupt production systems.

The solution is designed to reduce Active Directory recovery times from hours to minutes. It creates a clean standby copy of Active Directory inside an isolated, air-gapped Cleanroom environment.

Organisations can switch to the standby copy when production identity services become unavailable, avoiding the need to wait for a full forest recovery. The approach is also designed to reduce reliance on complex identity synchronisation with alternative Identity and Access Management systems.

Clean copy

Active Directory Pre Recover uses Commvault's existing Cleanroom and Threat Scan technologies. Cleanroom provides the isolated environment for maintaining the standby Active Directory copy.

Threat Scan continuously checks Active Directory backups for malicious content. Together, the technologies are intended to ensure the standby copy is clean before it is needed during a cyber incident.

Commvault said the approach combines faster recovery with a clean recovery environment. This is intended to reduce the risk of restoring compromised identity infrastructure.

Identity systems

Active Directory manages authentication and access to applications, systems and user accounts across organisations. Commvault said identity infrastructure has become a primary target for attackers.

A compromise can affect access to applications and other business systems. Restoring identity services can therefore be an important part of recovering from a cyber incident. Active Directory Pre Recover is designed to provide an alternative to waiting for complete recovery of an affected Active Directory environment.

Organisations can instead fail over to the standby copy held in the isolated Cleanroom environment.

Business continuity

The tool is designed to keep critical operations running while production identity services are unavailable. Applications can continue authenticating against the trusted standby identity service.

Commvault said this can reduce disruption to applications and infrastructure during a cyber incident. The approach also removes the need to replicate accounts into alternative Identity and Access Management systems while organisations wait for a full forest restoration.

The capability is intended for situations where organisations need to restore access quickly while ensuring the recovered environment does not contain malicious content.

Recovery times

"Identity is foundational to every enterprise application, user, and business process," said Rajiv Kottomtharayil, Chief Products Officer, Commvault.

"Commvault has already made significant progress reducing identity recovery times from weeks to hours, and now we are extending that progress toward near-real-time availability. The result is faster access to critical business systems and greater confidence during cyber recovery," said Kottomtharayil.

Customer access

Active Directory Pre Recover will initially be made available through an early access programme. The capability is expected to become available in the coming months and will form part of Commvault's Identity Resilience portfolio.

Enterprise Active Directory customers will receive Active Directory Pre Recover as part of their existing licence. The offering will also include a limited version of Cleanroom.

Availability will be provided globally through Commvault's partner ecosystem. The product is intended to give organisations a standby identity environment that can be activated within minutes when production Active Directory services are unavailable.