CyberFortress: Managed Disaster Recovery and Backup Solutions
CyberFortress provides managed backup and disaster recovery solutions for mid-market and enterprise firms, ensuring business continuity through a 4-step recovery process.
Overview
CyberFortress is a global leader in managed data protection, specializing in Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, the company was formed through the strategic combination of several industry-leading data protection firms, including KeepItSafe, LiveVault, and OffsiteDataSync. This consolidation has allowed CyberFortress to amass a deep well of expertise and a global footprint of secure data centers.
The company’s primary focus is helping organizations mitigate the risks associated with data loss, whether caused by cyberattacks, hardware failure, or natural disasters. CyberFortress serves a broad spectrum of industries, with a particular emphasis on highly regulated sectors such as healthcare, finance, and legal, where data availability and compliance are non-negotiable. Their service portfolio covers the entire data protection lifecycle, including initial risk assessment, customized solution design, continuous monitoring, and full-scale disaster recovery execution.
In an era where ransomware is a constant threat, CyberFortress has positioned itself as a critical partner for businesses that cannot afford downtime. Their market presence is defined by their ability to manage complex, hybrid IT environments—protecting data across on-premises servers, virtual machines, and cloud-native applications like Microsoft 365 and Salesforce. By providing a single pane of glass for disparate data sources, CyberFortress simplifies the management of complex backup estates for IT leaders.
Positioning
CyberFortress positions itself as the "Recovery Standard" in the data protection market. Their strategic positioning moves away from the traditional "insurance policy" messaging of the backup industry toward a "readiness and resilience" narrative. They target mid-market and enterprise organizations that have outgrown basic backup tools but lack the internal resources to manage a sophisticated, multi-site disaster recovery program.
In their competitive messaging, CyberFortress highlights the "Recovery Gap"—the difference between having a backup and being able to actually recover. They differentiate from hyperscale cloud providers by emphasizing their managed service layer; while AWS or Azure provide the building blocks, CyberFortress provides the finished, managed architecture and the guarantee of execution. Their brand is built on the pillars of simplicity, reliability, and expertise. They position themselves against "hardware-only" vendors by arguing that software and storage are insufficient without a proven recovery methodology. By focusing on the outcome (recovery) rather than the process (backup), CyberFortress occupies a high-value niche in the market as a specialist firm that provides peace of mind through rigorous testing and expert-led support.
Differentiation
The CyberFortress product suite is built on a foundation of "The CyberFortress 4-Step Recovery Wizard," a proprietary methodology integrated into their service delivery. Unlike standard backup software that leaves the recovery process to the user, CyberFortress products are engineered for rapid, orchestrated restoration. Key technical advantages include their ability to provide a "Backup of the Backup," creating physically and logically isolated copies of data to protect against sophisticated ransomware attacks that target primary backup repositories.
Their solutions offer deep integration with industry-leading technologies like Veeam and Asigra, but they add a proprietary management and monitoring layer that provides granular visibility into "recoverability" rather than just "backup success." A significant innovation is their automated recovery testing, which continuously validates that backup data can actually be spun up into a functional environment. This eliminates the "recovery gap" where backups appear successful but fail during an actual emergency. Furthermore, their infrastructure is globally distributed with SOC 2 Type II compliant data centers, offering geo-redundancy and data sovereignty options that meet stringent regulatory requirements across various jurisdictions. The technical focus is not just on moving data, but on minimizing both Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) through optimized data deduplication and WAN acceleration.
Ideal Customer Profile
The ideal CyberFortress customer is a mid-to-large enterprise (250 to 5,000+ employees) that views data as their most critical asset but lacks the internal bandwidth to manage a complex, multi-site disaster recovery infrastructure. They typically operate in regulated industries like healthcare, finance, or manufacturing. This customer values 'peace of mind' and 'guaranteed recovery' over the lowest possible price point and often has a hybrid IT environment containing both modern virtualized workloads and mission-critical legacy systems like IBM i. High-growth companies that are moving away from tape-based backups or manual off-sites are also a perfect fit.
Best Fit
CyberFortress is the ideal choice for:
- Mid-Market to Enterprise Disaster Recovery: Organizations that cannot afford more than a few minutes of downtime and require a managed 'Recovery-as-a-Service' (DRaaS) model rather than a self-service tool.
- Complex Hybrid Environments: Companies running a mix of legacy on-premises hardware (like IBM i/AS400) alongside modern VMware or Hyper-V virtualized environments.
- Compliance-Heavy Industries: Healthcare (HIPAA), Finance (SEC/FINRA), and Legal firms that require offsite, air-gapped backups and documented recovery testing to satisfy auditors.
- Lean IT Teams: Organizations that lack a dedicated 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) or Backup Admin team and need a partner to take full responsibility for the success of the restore process.
Offerings
- CyberFortress DRaaS: The flagship managed disaster recovery service. Includes warm standby infrastructure and expert-led failover/failback support.
- Managed Backup: A fully outsourced backup management service for servers, databases, and endpoints, utilizing industry-leading engines like Veeam and Commvault but managed by CyberFortress experts.
- SaaS Protection: Purpose-built backup for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce, offering independent backup copies outside of the SaaS provider's cloud.
- IBM i Cloud Backup & DR: A specialized offering for Power Systems users, providing cloud-based VTL (Virtual Tape Library) and hot-site recovery options.
- Object Storage: Secure, S3-compatible immutable cloud storage for long-term archival and compliance data.
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Introduction
Welcome to the Comprehensive Buying Guide for CyberFortress. In an era where ransomware attacks occur every 11 seconds and data growth is exponential, the traditional 'backup and hope' strategy is no longer viable. CyberFortress differentiates itself by shifting the focus from mere backup to guaranteed recovery.
This guide is designed for IT Directors, CISOs, and Infrastructure Managers who are evaluating CyberFortress as a potential partner for Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Managed Backup. You will learn about their unique 'CyberFortress Recovery Management' (CRM) methodology, their specialized support for complex environments (including IBM i), and how their managed service model removes the operational burden from your internal IT staff. By the end of this guide, you will have the technical and financial framework necessary to determine if CyberFortress is the right fit for your organization’s resilience strategy.
Key Features
- Managed DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service): Unlike 'DIY' software, CyberFortress provides a fully managed service where their engineers help design, test, and execute your failover during a disaster.
- Ransomware Readiness & Immutability: Features 'Air-Gapped' and S3 Object Lock technology, ensuring that once data is backed up, it cannot be encrypted or deleted by attackers, even if they gain admin credentials.
- The CyberFortress Recovery Management (CRM) Methodology: A proprietary four-step process (Inventory, Protect, Mitigate, Recover) that ensures no data is left unprotected and recovery is scripted and automated.
- IBM i (AS/400) Specialization: One of the few modern DRaaS providers with deep expertise in protecting legacy Power Systems, offering cloud-based recovery for mid-range computing.
- Continuous Data Protection (CDP): For mission-critical apps, CyberFortress offers near-zero RPOs, capturing data changes in real-time rather than waiting for nightly backup windows.
- Global Backup Footprint: Multiple secure, Tier 3 and 4 data centers across the US and Europe to ensure data residency compliance and geographic redundancy.
Use Cases
- Scenario 1: Ransomware Recovery for Healthcare. A regional hospital system uses CyberFortress to maintain immutable backups. When a workstation infection spreads to the server vlan, they use CyberFortress to 'rewind' their EMR system to a point-in-time 15 minutes before the infection, avoiding a multi-million dollar ransom.
- Scenario 2: Legacy Modernization for Finance. A bank running core services on IBM i (AS/400) moves their DR to CyberFortress. They replace expensive, aging physical tape libraries with automated cloud vaulting, reducing their recovery time from 4 days to 4 hours.
- Scenario 3: M365 Protection for Legal Firms. A law firm realizes Microsoft’s 'Shared Responsibility' model doesn't protect against accidental folder deletion by an associate. They use CyberFortress to provide 7-year retention for all emails and Teams chats, satisfying discovery requirements.
- Scenario 4: Hybrid Cloud Resilience for Manufacturing. A manufacturer with data in both on-prem servers and Azure uses CyberFortress as a single 'pane of glass' to manage backups for both, ensuring that a regional power outage at their plant doesn't stop their global supply chain operations.
Pricing Models
CyberFortress typically uses a 'Predictable Capacity' pricing model, which includes:
- Storage-Based Pricing: A monthly fee based on the total amount of data protected (per TB). This usually includes the software licenses and the cloud storage.
- Resource Reservation: For DRaaS, a 'reservation fee' for the CPU and RAM resources held in standby at the recovery site, ensuring they are available instantly when needed.
- SaaS Protection: Per-user/per-month pricing for Microsoft 365 and Salesforce backups, often with unlimited storage options.
- Professional Services: One-time setup and onboarding fees that cover architecture, initial seeding, and the first full DR drill.
- No Egress Fees: Unlike large public clouds, CyberFortress often bundles data transfer costs, so you aren't penalized financially during a recovery event.
Technical Requirements
- Connectivity: Minimum 10Mbps dedicated upload bandwidth (higher recommended for large daily change rates).
- Operating Systems: Support for Windows Server (2012-2022), Linux (RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian), and IBM i (OS/400).
- Virtualization: VMware vSphere 6.x+, Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 R2+, or Nutanix AHV.
- Hardware: For local-to-cloud scenarios, a physical or virtual 'CyberFortress Appliance' may be deployed on-site to act as a local cache and deduplication engine.
- Browser: Modern web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) for the CyberFortress Management Portal.
Business Requirements
To successfully implement CyberFortress, organizations should prepare the following:
- Defined RTO/RPO Objectives: Stakeholders must define acceptable Recovery Time Objectives (how long you can be down) and Recovery Point Objectives (how much data loss is tolerable) for every critical application.
- Executive Sponsorship: Since DR planning often crosses departmental lines, leadership buy-in is required to prioritize data mapping and business impact analysis.
- Network Documentation: A clear map of current network topology, including IP schemes and VLANs, is necessary to ensure the 'failover' environment mirrors the production site.
- Testing Cadence: A commitment to participate in at least one or two full-scale recovery drills per year to validate the DR plan.
- Change Management: A process to notify CyberFortress when new critical servers or applications are added to the environment so they can be included in the backup scope.
Implementation Timeline
A typical CyberFortress implementation spans 4 to 10 weeks, depending on data volume and environment complexity:
- Phase 1: Discovery & Architecture (Weeks 1-2): Engineering deep dive to audit the current environment, identify critical VMs/databases, and design the vaulting architecture.
- Phase 2: Agent Deployment & Initial Seeding (Weeks 2-4): Installation of backup software/appliances and the initial 'heavy lift' of data to CyberFortress clouds. Large datasets may require physical 'seed' drives to bypass bandwidth constraints.
- Phase 3: Configuration & Policy Fine-Tuning (Weeks 4-6): Setting retention policies, immutability locks, and WAN optimization settings.
- Phase 4: The 'First Run' & Validation (Weeks 6-8): Verification of initial backups and troubleshooting of any failed jobs.
- Phase 5: Full DR Drill & Go-Live (Weeks 8-10): A coordinated test where applications are spun up in the CyberFortress cloud to prove the RTO/RPO targets are met.
Support Options
CyberFortress positions itself as a 'white-glove' provider:
- 24/7/365 Live Support: Access to US and UK-based engineers who are recovery experts, not just ticket takers.
- Emergency Response: In a 'declared disaster,' customers get a dedicated recovery lead to manage the failover process.
- Managed Testing: CyberFortress engineers assist in performing annual or bi-annual DR tests, providing a 'Certificate of Readiness' upon completion.
- Proactive Monitoring: Their team monitors backup success daily; if a job fails, they often begin troubleshooting before the customer even notices.
- Knowledge Base: Extensive documentation and a customer portal for self-service reporting and status checks.
Integration Requirements
CyberFortress is built on a 'Broad Compatibility' philosophy, supporting:
- Platform Integrations: Native support for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Nutanix AHV.
- Public Cloud: Integration with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform for hybrid cloud backup and cross-cloud recovery.
- SaaS Applications: Dedicated connectors for Microsoft 365 (Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams) and Salesforce to prevent data loss from accidental deletion or ransomware.
- Legacy Systems: Specialized support for IBM i (AS/400) and AIX environments, which are often ignored by commodity backup providers.
- API Access: RESTful APIs are available for enterprise customers who wish to integrate backup status alerts into their own internal monitoring dashboards or ITSM tools like ServiceNow.
Security & Compliance
Security is the core of the CyberFortress offering:
- Certifications: SOC 2 Type II compliant facilities and processes; HIPAA and PCI-DSS compliant environments.
- Encryption: Data is encrypted using AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit. Customers maintain control of encryption keys (BYOK).
- Physical Security: Data centers feature biometric access, 24/7 armed guards, and redundant power/cooling.
- Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Required for all access to the management console to prevent unauthorized backup deletion.
- Data Sovereignty: Options to pin data to specific geographic regions (US, UK, EU) to satisfy GDPR and local privacy laws.
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