Puntos Clave

• Vishing attacks have surged dramatically, with organized groups industrializing social engineering to gain initial access through help desks.
• Attackers quickly pivot from compromised human accounts to persistent machine identities like OAuth tokens and service accounts.
• Most organizations lack governance and visibility over non-human identities (NHI), creating a major security blind spot.
• Effective readiness depends on correlating identity signals and treating machine identities as high-risk assets.
• True resilience requires the ability to detect and roll back unauthorized privilege changes before attackers establish persistence.

Your help desk staff just got a phone call. The caller knew the employee’s name, their manager, and the last four digits of their badge number. They asked for a password reset. Standard procedure. The IT rep complied.

That call was a fraud. And the attacker is now inside.

Voice phishing – vishing – jumped un 449 % en 2025. Adversary groups have turned social engineering into a scalable operation: recruiting callers, writing scripts, andpaying $500 to $1,000 per successful help desk impersonation. They’re not looking for your data. They’re looking for a foothold.

Once inside, attackers don’t linger on the human account. They move laterally – stealing OAuth tokens, creating new administrative service accounts, embedding access in machine-layer credentials that nobody watches. Unlike human passwords, those credentials are rarely rotated. They don’t trigger login alerts. They can survive a full remediation of the original compromised user.

By the time your security team closes the ticket on the help desk incident, the attacker may have been quietly persistent in your environment for weeks. The governance gap makes it worse.

Fewer than 25% of organizations have formal policies for creating or decommissioning NHIs – the service accounts, API keys, and OAuth tokens that now outnumber human users by 144 a 1. Nearly all of them carry permissions far beyond what their function requires.

Most organizations have almost no confidence in their ability to detect an attack targeting this layer. That’s not a prevention failure. It’s a recovery planning failure.

What Readiness Looks Like

Prevention at the help desk matters – training, callback verification, out-of-band confirmation. But it isn’t enough on its own. Attackers are industrializing faster than awareness programs can keep pace.

Readiness means correlating the signals: A help desk interaction followed immediately by a multi-factor authentication (MFA) reset or a new token creation is a high-probability indicator of compromise.

It means treating machine identities as Tier 0 assets – governing their creation, scoping their permissions, and monitoring for unauthorized escalation. And it means having the ability to detect and roll back malicious privilege changes quickly, before they become the new normal.

Explore how Commvault identity resiliencesupports rapid detection, rollback, and recovery of your identity environment.

Preguntas frecuentes

Q: What is a vishing attack in the context of enterprise security?

A: Vishing (voice phishing) uses phone calls to impersonate employees and manipulate IT help desks into granting access – typically through password or MFA resets. It’s increasingly industrialized, with organized groups recruiting callers and using pre-written scripts to maximize success rates.

Q: Why do attackers pivot to machine identities after a vishing entry?

A: Human accounts get remediated. NHIs – OAuth tokens, service accounts, API keys – are more persistent and rarely rotated, often invisible to traditional monitoring. Migrating access to the machine layer allows attackers to maintain that persistence long after the original human credential breach is detected and closed.

Q: What does “identity resilience” mean in practice?

A: It means your organization can help detect unauthorized privilege changes in near real time and help restore the identity environment to a trusted state quickly. Detection alone isn’t sufficient – the ability to roll back malicious activity and verify that machine identities haven’t been tampered with (or if tampered with, to be rolled back to a prior good point in time) is what separates readiness from exposure.

Vidya Shankaran is Field CTO at Commvault.

Puntos Clave

• La ingeniería social a través del servicio de asistencia técnica se ha convertido en uno de los principales puntos de entrada, ya que los ataques de «vishing» (phishing por voz) están aumentando rápidamente y provocan el robo de credenciales.
• Las identidades no humanas, como las cuentas de servicio y los tokens, son un importante punto ciego en materia de seguridad; a menudo no se gestionan y se aprovechan mucho para el movimiento lateral.
• Active Directory (AD) es un objetivo muy atractivo debido a su control centralizado y a las posibles configuraciones erróneas.
• La prevención por sí sola no basta; las organizaciones necesitan sistemas sólidos de detección y una capacidad de recuperación rápida para limitar los daños.
• Immediate operational actions – like auditing accounts and correlating help desk activity with identity changes – can significantly reduce risk.

AD sigue siendo uno de los principales objetivos de los atacantes porque es el núcleo de la identidad corporativa.Estudios recientes muestran queel 67 % de los incidentes implican ahora una violación de la identidad, with attackers going after critical systems like AD within hours of initial access.Once compromised, recovery can take days or weeks – causing significant business disruption.
The question worth asking isn’t whether AD is a target.It’s how attackers get taquí – and why the path is so much shorter than security teams might expect.

3 pasos para llegar a un acuerdo total

Grupos de ciberdelincuentes como ShinyHunters y Scattered Spider han convertido la ingeniería social en una operación a gran escala.Voice phishing – vishing – jumped 449% in 2025.Se recluta a personas para realizar las llamadas, se les proporciona un guion yse les paga hasta 1 000 dólares depending on success and hit rate.
That means, it’s possible to start an attack with one step: Get a password reset or multi-factor authentication (MFA) change.That’s it.
From that single credential, the attacker moves laterally into cloud and virtualized environments.They harvest OAuth tokens, create new administrative service accounts, and embed access in machine-layer credentials.These non-human identities – service accounts, API keys, tokens – now outnumber human users 144 to 1.La expansión y la sobrecarga operativa dificultan la rotación y la auditoría. Ese movimiento lateral tiene un destino: Active Directory.

La publicidad es el objetivo

AD is the central nervous system of enterprise identity.Control it and you control everything – user accounts, group policies, and access to every domain-joined system in the network.The reason it’s so attractive to attackers – and so difficult to defend – is structural.Any authenticated user can read the entire directory.Every domain-joined system inherits trust from it.
Group Policy Objects linked at the domain head can be weaponized to disable security controls outright.Legacy protocols left enabled for application compatibility provide straightforward access.Microsoft’s own documentation says that “most identity attacks utilize common misconfigurations in Active Directory.”

When an attacker reaches the AD, they don’t need to force entry.The door is usually open.

La prevención es necesaria, pero no suficiente

The standard security stack – MFA, endpoint detection, email filtering – is built around human behavior.It wasn’t designed to govern the machine identity layer or to detect the kind of slow, legitimate-looking privilege escalation that characterizes modern AD attacks.An attacker that moves from a compromised human account to a service account to a domain administrator over 72 hours may never trigger a single alert.
This is why the conversation must shift from prevention-first to recovery-first.
Prevention still matters.Least-privilege access, auditing AD changes, hardening default configurations, disabling inactive accounts – these can help reduce the attack surface.But given that half of organizations have already experienced an AD attack, designing only for prevention means designing to fail.
True identity resilience requires the ability to detect unauthorized privilege escalations in near real time, roll back malicious changes before they propagate, and restore the identity environment to a known-trusted state quickly – not in days or weeks, but fast enough to contain the blast radius.That means treating AD and the non-human identity layer as Tier 0 assets, with the same governance and recovery investment you’d apply to any other mission-critical system.

Qué hacer ahora mismo para reforzar tu identidad

The gap between waquí most organizations are and waquí they need to be on identity resilience is real.But it’s closeable.The immediate priorities are unglamorous and operational:

1. Audit what’s in your AD.
2. Find the accounts that shouldn’t still exist.
3. Rotate the credentials that haven’t been touched in years.
4. Relaciona la actividad del servicio de asistencia con los eventos de creación de tokens y cuentas.

A help desk interaction followed by an MFA reset followed by a new service account is a high-confidence attack signal – and it’s detectable if you’re looking for it.
The longer-term work is architectural: Build recovery capability into your identity program so that when an attack succeeds – and it’s usually when, not if – you can contain it, reverse it, and try to restore trust faster than the attacker can consolidate their position.
Attackers are counting on your AD being ungoverned, your machine identities being invisible, and your recovery plan being theoretical.Close one of those gaps this quarter.Close all three and you’ve fundamentally changed the math. 

: desde la evaluación de vulnerabilidades hasta la reversión con un solo clic y la recuperación completa del bosque.
Hace poco participé junto a Vidya Shankaran en el podcast STRIVE para hablar sobre la brecha de gobernanza en las identidades no humanas. Echa un vistazo a nuestro episodio – from vulnerability assessment to one-click rollback and full forest recovery.
I recently joined Vidya Shankaran on the STRIVE podcast to talk about the governance gap for non-human identities.Check out our episode aquí.And be sure to read Vidya’s blog, El punto ciego de la identidad de las máquinas se ha convertido ahora en una superficie de ataque principal.

Preguntas frecuentes

Q: Why are help desks becoming a major security risk?

A: Help desks are often trusted to reset passwords and modify MFA settings, making them attractive targets for social engineering.Attackers exploit this trust to gain initial access with minimal resistance.
Q: What role do non-human identities play in attacks?

A: Sprawl and operational overhead make rotation and audit of non-human identities, such as service accounts and API keys, difficult.Attackers use them to maintain persistence and move undetected across systems.
Q: Why is AD such a critical target?

A: AD controls authentication and access across the network.Gaining control of it allows attackers to manage users, policies, and systems at scale.
Q: Isn’t MFA and endpoint security enough to stop these attacks?

A: These tools focus on human behavior and may not detect slow, legitimate-looking privilege escalation.Attackers can operate within normal patterns and avoid triggering alerts.
Q: What does a recovery-first security approach mean?

A: It means preparing for the reality that breaches will happen and prioritizing the ability to detect, contain, and reverse them quickly.This approach helps reduce downtime and can help limit overall impact.
Q: What are the most important steps to take immediately?

A: Start by auditing your AD, removing unnecessary accounts, rotating old credentials, and monitoring for suspicious sequences of help desk and identity-related activities.
Dan Conrad is Principal Technologist and Field CTO at Commvault.

Puntos Clave

• La migración de máquinas virtuales a Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization es un proceso por fases que requiere una protección constante en todos los entornos híbridos.
• Una platform de protección de datos unificada y nativa de Kubernetes platform reducir la complejidad y platform eliminar la necesidad de herramientas o procesos independientes.
• Reliable resilience – including immutable backups and threat detection – is critical during migration, when risks are highest.
• Las opciones de recuperación flexibles permiten a las organizaciones adaptarse rápidamente si fallan los pasos de la migración o cambian los plazos.
• Consolidar la protección de las máquinas virtuales y los contenedores ayuda a reducir la proliferación de herramientas y a mantener una gobernanza coherente.

If you’re an IT leader today, chances are your virtualization strategy is under active review.

Rising costs, licensing uncertainty, and long-term vendor lock-in have many organizations reassessing their reliance on traditional hypervisors. At the same time, Kubernetes has matured into the operational foundation for modern applications.

These two realities are converging – and for many enterprises, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is emerging as a preferred destination for running virtual machines within a Kubernetes-native operating model.

This transition is accelerating across industries. As organizations modernize infrastructure on their own terms, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is increasingly viewed as a way to modernize the platform without the need for application refactoring. With that momentum comes a critical question:

How do you migrate virtual machines while maintaining consistent protection, resilience, and recoverability throughout the process?

To answer it, you need to examine how most enterprise migrations actually unfold – and where protection and resilience become critical.

La migración es un viaje, no algo que ocurre una sola vez

Seasoned IT leaders know that infrastructure transitions rarely happen all at once.

For enterprises opting to move from hypervisors like VMware to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, the transition typically unfolds in phases. During this time, organizations inevitably operate in a mixed state:

• Las máquinas virtuales basadas en VMware siguen respaldando las operaciones clave de la empresa.
• Máquinas virtuales que se acaban de poner en marcha en Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
• Aplicaciones en contenedores que comparten los mismos clústeres de Red Hat OpenShift.

This coexistence period introduces complexity and risk. Data is in motion, environments are changing, and protection gaps can appear if tooling and processes don’t evolve alongside workloads.

Es fundamental mantener una protección fiable

Commvault lleva mucho tiempo ofreciendo soluciones de protección y recuperación de datos tanto para entornos VMware como para cargas de trabajo de Kubernetes que se ejecutan en Red Hat OpenShift. Ese mismo modelo de protección nativo de Kubernetes y basado en políticas se extiende ahora a las máquinas virtuales que se ejecutan en Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization. Lo que realmente les gusta a los clientes es la coherencia:

• Una única platform la protección y la recuperación.
• Operaciones basadas en políticas que se aplican de manera uniforme en todas las cargas de trabajo.
• Diseñado para funcionar con tus herramientas y procesos actuales a medida que los entornos van cambiando.

VMs running on Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization are protected using the same workflows and governance constructs as containerized applications. This unified approach is being embraced by organizations standardizing on Red Hat OpenShift that want a simpler, more consistent way to manage data across environments.

This capability is available today.Commvault Cloudofrece protección para entornos de Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization compatibles con la versión de soporte a largo plazo 11.40 y la versión de innovación 11.42, lo que significa que los clientes ya pueden poner estas funciones en producción.

You Shouldn’t Need to Manage Protection Differently

Once VMs move to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, they shouldn’t require special handling from a protection standpoint.

Commvault Cloud discovers and protects Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization VMs alongside containerized applications, helping give teams centralized visibility, consistent policy enforcement, and simplified recovery operations. Virtualized and containerized workloads are managed together – without introducing operational silos.

For organizations managing diverse application portfolios, this treatment of VMs inside Kubernetes helps reduce operational friction while maintaining enterprise-grade controls.

La ciberresiliencia es clave cuando la migración aumenta el riesgo.

Los periodos de migración son un momento especialmente vulnerable. Los cambios generan complejidad, y la complejidad aumenta el riesgo de perder datos y de sufrir ataques de ransomware. Commvault Cloud mantener la resiliencia durante toda esta fase gracias a:

• Copias de seguridad aisladas físicamente e inmutables para cargas de trabajo de Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
• Datos de copia de seguridad que facilitan la detección de amenazas y el análisis forense, lo que ayuda a los equipos a comprobar que todo está listo para la recuperación antes de restaurar las cargas de trabajo.
• Advanced recovery capabilities designed to help organizations minimize operational disruption.

Tanto si las cargas de trabajo están en fase previa a la migración, en plena transición o ya funcionando a pleno rendimiento en Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, la resiliencia se mantiene intacta.

La flexibilidad en la recuperación te da confianza

Every modernization initiative needs room for adjustment.

Commvault supports both in-place and out-of-place recovery for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization virtual machines, including full VM context and configuration. If a migration step doesn’t go as planned – or timelines need to shift – teams may recover quickly and move forward without compromising availability or data integrity.

Protección nativa de Kubernetes más allá de las máquinas virtuales

Para muchas empresas, la virtualización es solo una parte de una estrategia más amplia de modernización de aplicaciones. Commvault Cloud ofrece protección centrada en las aplicaciones y nativa de Kubernetes para cargas de trabajo en contenedores, incluidos los volúmenes persistentes y los metadatos de las aplicaciones, en todas las distribuciones de Kubernetes certificadas por la CNCF. Esto permite la movilidad y la recuperación de las aplicaciones cloud, al tiempo que ayuda a mantener la coherencia operativa en todos los entornos.

Reducir la proliferación de herramientas a medida que evoluciona la infraestructura

Platform transitions often introduce new tools, new processes – and new complexity.

By using Commvault Cloud as a unified protection platform for:

• Máquinas virtuales de VMware.
• Máquinas virtuales de Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
• Aplicaciones en contenedores.

Las organizaciones pueden ayudar a reducir la proliferación de herramientas, simplificar la administración y mantener una gobernanza coherente, incluso a medida que evolucionan las estrategias de infraestructura.

Cómo encaja todo

During any migration, it helps to understand how the pieces work together. Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit for Virtualization takes care of moving VMs from VMware into Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.

Commvault Cloud helps provide the protection and resilience that stays with your workloads throughout the process, so data can remain protected before, during, and after migration. This can help keep recoverability from falling behind as workloads move.

Continuing the Conversation at Red Hat Summit

We’re already working with customers that are actively moving virtual machines onto OpenShift Virtualization – and we’re continuing these discussions at Red Hat Summit, May 11–14 in Atlanta.

At the Commvault booth, we’ll be:

• Hablando con los responsables de TI sobre los retos reales en materia de resiliencia.
• Compartimos consejos prácticos para que puedas hacer la migración con confianza.
• Demostración de Cloud de Commvault Cloud para Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.

If maintaining resilience and recoverability throughout your virtualization strategy is a priority, we’d welcome the opportunity to connect.

Avanzando con confianza

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is becoming a foundational component of modern enterprise infrastructure. But you can’t rush migration at any cost; you must build protection, resilience, and recovery into the process from the beginning.

With Commvault Cloud, protecting Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization workloads isn’t a future aspiration. It’s something customers already are doing – using a unified platform to modernize confidently while staying resilient and recoverable.

“Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization delivers a reliable, consistent foundation for organizations to support their entire virtualized estate,” says Steve Gordon, Senior Director, Product Management, Hybrid Cloud Platforms, at Red Hat. “By leveraging an optimized integration like Commvault Cloud with Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, our customers can move forward with greater confidence, knowing their workloads are protected consistently before, during, and after migration.”

Preguntas frecuentes

Q: Why is VM migration considered a multi-phase process?

A: Most enterprises cannot migrate all workloads at once, so they operate in a hybrid state with legacy and new environments running simultaneously. This phased approach introduces complexity, making consistent protection and visibility essential throughout the transition.

Q: What role does resilience play during VM migration?

A: Resilience enables organizations to maintain data protection, recover quickly from failures, and defend against threats like ransomware. During migration, when systems are in flux, strong resilience measures can help prevent data loss and operational disruption.

Q: How does Commvault Cloud simplify protection across environments?

A: Commvault Cloud provides a single platform with policy-driven protection for VMware VMs, OpenShift Virtualization VMs, and containerized applications. This unified approach enables consistent operations without introducing new tools or workflows.

Q: What makes Kubernetes-native protection important?

A: Kubernetes-native protection aligns with how modern applications are deployed and managed, covering both containers and virtual machines. It enables simple data management, mobility, and recovery within cloud-native environments.

Q: How does recovery flexibility improve migration confidence?

A: Flexible recovery options, such as in-place and out-of-place restores, can help teams quickly recover workloads if something goes wrong. This adaptability helps reduce downtime and enables organizations to adjust migration plans without risking data integrity.

Q: How can organizations reduce complexity during infrastructure transitions?

A: By adopting a unified data protection platform, organizations can manage all workloads – virtualized and containerized – through a single interface. This approach helps reduce tool sprawl, simplify administration, and maintain consistent governance across evolving environments.

Jason Gizaes director sénior de marketing de socios de contenido global en Commvault.

Puntos Clave

• La la Readiverse Academy ha puesto en marcha un programa de certificación estructurado y por niveles, que abarca desde los conocimientos básicos hasta la especialización avanzada cloud .
• Las certificaciones se ajustan a puestos reales, lo que ayuda a los alumnos a desarrollar habilidades relevantes para sus responsabilidades en Cloud de Commvault Cloud .
• The program includes four tiers – Practitioner, Specialist, Professional, and Expert – each increasing in depth and operational capability.
• El aprendizaje se basa en tres pilares fundamentales: platform , resiliencia cibernética y conocimientos sobre cargas de trabajo.
• Las opciones de aprendizaje flexibles, que incluyen formatos a tu propio ritmo y con profesor, permiten a los profesionales avanzar según sus horarios y objetivos.

The environments you protect with Commvault® Cloud are increasingly complex, and the expectations on your teams that run them are higher than ever. It’s no longer just about knowing the platform. It’s about being able to operate, protect, and recover, often under pressure.

If you’ve already started your learning journey in the la Readiverse Academy, welcome back. And if you’re new here, you’re joining at the right time.

Today, we’re introducing a structured, tiered certification approach that gives learners a clear, skill‑based path from foundational platform knowledge to advanced cloud engineering expertise.

Creamos contenido para ti

Commvault Cloud environments demand expertise across multiple responsibilities, often within the same role. Administrators, security specialists, cloud engineers, and workload owners require different depths and breadths of knowledge. And not everyone needs to learn the same things, in the same order, to be effective.

The new la Readiverse Academy certification tiers reflect that reality. Learners progress through clearly defined levels that build on one another so that your certification aligns to what you actually do and validates those capabilities to the teams you work with.

• Commvault Cloud Practitioner – foundational platform and resilience knowledge.
• Commvault Cloud Specialist – expanded operational and security depth.
• Commvault Cloud Professional – advanced recovery and workload expertise.
• Commvault Cloud Expert – full cloud engineering and resilience leadership.

Each tier is earned through a combination of coursework, hands‑on lab activities, and validated assessments. As learners progress, the scope and depth of operational capability demonstrated increases accordingly.

Un camino claro: de principiante a experto

El programa de certificación se basa en tres pilares fundamentales de competencias que están presentes en todos los niveles:

• platform básicas platform
• Conceptos de resiliencia cibernética
• Carga de trabajo y experiencia en funcionalidades

Cada nivel añade requisitos específicos relacionados con esos pilares. Los alumnos pueden hacer cursos sueltos o combinar los requisitos indicados para conseguir los objetivos de certificación.

Already in la Readiverse Academy? What this Means for You.

With a new structure like this, the most important question is what it means for the progress you’ve already made. If you’ve already completed courses or earned certifications in the la Readiverse Academy, congratulations! Your investment matters, and we want to be clear about what happens next.

Those certifications represent your history and accomplishments with Commvault. The new program is aligned to our expanded portfolio of cyber resilience features for Commvault Software, Commvault SaaS, and hybrid environments. As your needs grow to require more from Commvault, these courses and certifications will help you configure, manage, and optimize Commvault to meet your organization’s unique needs.

There is no direct progression from the previous certification tracks to the new program, but your existing certifications validate your expertise on the former product releases. As those releases are retired, those certifications will reach end of life as well. Learners who are already invested in the la Readiverse Academy are well positioned to progress quickly.

Who Should Take la Readiverse Academy Courses and Certifications

la Readiverse Academy certifications are designed for professionals working across Commvault SaaS, Commvault Software, and hybrid environments.

• Platform administrators managing day‑to‑day operations.
• Especialistas en seguridad dedicados a proteger datos y reforzar la seguridad de los entornos.
• Cloud encargados de la configuración del plano de control y de la resiliencia avanzada.
• Los responsables de las tareas que necesiten tener conocimientos especializados en ámbitos específicos de datos.

All training is available for self‑paced learning, with select courses also offered in instructor‑led formats, so learners can progress in a way that fits their role and schedule.

Cómo empezar o seguir con tu proceso de aprendizaje

Whether you’re starting fresh or continuing your journey, the next step is simple and designed to meet you where you are.

• Inicia sesión o regístrate encommvault.com.
• ¿Eres nuevo en Commvault? Empieza con el curso «Commvault Cloud ».
• ¿Te encargas de la gestión de la carga de trabajo? Echa un vistazo a nuestro catálogo de cursos, que abarca prácticamente todo.
• ¿Buscas estrategias para facilitar la recuperación tras un ciberataque? El curso sobre ciberresiliencia es tu primer paso.

¿Qué nos espera ahora?

Our goal is to make advancement predictable, transparent, and aligned to real‑world roles to help learners know what’s next and how to prepare for it.

We are committed to giving every Commvault Cloud user the knowledge to operate, protect, and recover their environment with confidence. Because when it matters most, certification isn’t about credentials. It’s about being resilient and ready to recover.

Preguntas frecuentes

Q: What is the purpose of the la Readiverse Academy certification program?

A: The program provides a structured, skill-based learning path that helps professionals progress from basic platform knowledge to advanced cloud engineering expertise. It aligns training with real-world responsibilities to enable learners to apply their knowledge effectively in complex environments.

Q: What are the different certification tiers available?

A: There are four tiers: Commvault Cloud Practitioner, Specialist, Professional, and Expert. Each level builds on the previous one, increasing in technical depth, operational scope, and leadership capability.

Q: Who should enroll in la Readiverse Academy courses?

A: The courses are designed for platform administrators, security specialists, cloud engineers, and workload owners working across SaaS, software, and hybrid environments. Each role can follow a tailored learning path based on their responsibilities.

Q: How are the certifications earned?

A: Certifications are achieved through a combination of coursework, hands-on labs, and validated assessments. As learners progress, they demonstrate increasing levels of expertise across platform, security, and workload domains.

Q: What happens to existing la Readiverse Academy certifications?

A: Existing certifications remain valid as proof of past expertise but are tied to earlier product releases. As those releases are retired, the certifications will reach end of life, encouraging learners to transition to the new program.

Q: How can someone get started with the new program?

A: New learners can begin with the Commvault Cloud Administrator course, while existing users can log in to continue their progress. Additional courses are available based on specific goals, such as workload management or cyber resilience strategies.

Suzanne Klausner is Director, Customer Enablement Strategy, at Commvault.

Puntos Clave

• La mayoría de los ejercicios de simulación solo sirven para comprobar el rendimiento, en lugar de poner de manifiesto las deficiencias reales en la respuesta ante incidentes.
• Para que los ejercicios sean eficaces, deben incluir elementos de fricción, ambigüedad y presión que reflejen situaciones reales.
• Limitar el alcance del ejercicio a unos pocos escenarios críticos y definir el éxito como la detección de problemas, en lugar de quedar bien, puede dar lugar a conclusiones más significativas y aplicables.
• La participación de distintos departamentos, y no solo de los equipos técnicos, es fundamental para evaluar con precisión la respuesta de la organización.
• La verdadera resiliencia se demuestra mediante pruebas reales de recuperación, no solo con simulaciones basadas en debates.

There is a moment most security leaders recognize, even if they do not say it out loud. The tabletop just wrapped. The team is filing out. Everyone looks reasonably satisfied. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet question surfaces: Did we actually learn anything?

If you are honest, the answer is often no.
That is not because tabletop exercises are a bad idea. They are one of the most valuable tools a security leader has. The problem is how most organizations run them – and what they are actually measuring when they do.

La trampa del rendimiento

The most common mistake in tabletop exercises has nothing to do with the scenario. It has to do with the goal. Most teams, consciously or not, build exercises designed to demonstrate competence rather than discover gaps.
The scenario generally follows a clean arc. Information arrives in a logical sequence. The right people say the right things. Everyone feels prepared. And that feeling – confident, well-rehearsed, almost collegial – is exactly the problem.
Real incidents do not run on clean arcs. They arrive with incomplete information, conflicting signals, unavailable people, and a business demanding answers faster than the facts support. If your tabletop does not create that kind of friction, you have not tested incident response. You have practiced a conversation.
When the exercise is designed to validate rather than stress-test, a second problem follows: People stop being honest. Nobody says, “I don’t know who owns that decision” or “we have never actually tested that recovery path.” They say what sounds right. And the gaps that should surface in a controlled environment stay hidden until they surface in a real one.

Lo que realmente evalúa un buen ejercicio

Before you build a scenario, you need to answer a simpler question: What do you actually want to learn? Not 20 things. Three or four.
Can your team make a shutdown decision fast enough, and does everyone know who has the authority to make it? When security, IT, legal, and communications are all in the room with conflicting priorities, can they actually reach decisions together? Can you explain the business impact of an incident clearly enough for leadership to act – not just understand? And if you had to restore a critical system in the next four hours, could you really do it?

Once you know what you are testing, build a scenario with real friction. Make a key person unavailable mid-exercise. Introduce a customer escalation. Have a regulator ask a question the team cannot answer from the runbook.
Give people incomplete information and see how they make decisions anyway. The value is not in watching people succeed under pressure. It is in finding the places where the process breaks down while the stakes are still low enough to fix it.

Di esto en voz alta al principio: hoy en día, el éxito consiste en detectar problemas, no en quedar bien. Esa sola frase cambia lo que la gente se atreve a decir en la sala.

El problema de la gente

Una simulación en la que solo participen los equipos de seguridad y de TI es una conversación técnica, no un ejercicio de respuesta ante incidentes. Si el departamento jurídico no está presente, si el de comunicaciones tampoco está, y si faltan los responsables de negocio y la dirección ejecutiva, no estás poniendo a prueba cómo responde realmente tu organización ante una crisis. Lo que estás haciendo es ver cómo un grupo de gente inteligente analiza una situación hipotética. Los incidentes reales se gestionan en toda la empresa. El simulacro debería reflejar eso.

Hablar del tema no es suficiente

This is where most organizations stop short. A paper exercise is important – but it is not confidence.
Talking through a recovery scenario tells you something. Actually restoring a system tells you something different. Can you bring identity back to a clean point in time? Can you validate that what you are recovering is trustworthy? Can you restore a Tier 1 application and confirm it comes back cleanly, without carrying the infection with it?

Those are not questions you can answer in a conference room. At some point, the plan has to meet the environment – and you need to know whether they match.

Una vez finalizado el ejercicio

The debrief tells you whether the exercise mattered. If the hot wash is quiet, vague, or full of “good reminders,” the exercise did not push hard enough. A well-run tabletop should leave you with a short list of real findings, clear owners, and deadlines. If you cannot answer what broke, who is fixing it, and by when, you ran an event, not an exercise.
The goal was never to pass the exercise. It was to learn something important while the cost of being wrong was still just time.
Watch our recent episode of the STRIVE podcast, where I join my colleague Chris Mierzwa, Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing, for charlar a fondo sobre los ejercicios de simulación.

Preguntas frecuentes

Q: Why do most tabletop exercises fail to deliver real value?

A: Many exercises are designed to make teams look prepared rather than uncover weaknesses. This leads to scripted discussions that miss the unpredictability and pressure of real incidents.

Q: What should a tabletop exercise aim to achieve?

A: It should focus on answering a small number of critical questions, such as decision-making speed, ownership clarity, and recovery capability. This focus helps teams uncover meaningful gaps instead of surface-level insights.

Q: How can organizations make exercises more realistic?

A: Introduce uncertainty, missing information, and unexpected disruptions during the scenario. These elements force teams to think critically and act under pressure, closer to real incident conditions.

Q: Who should be involved in a tabletop exercise?

A: Beyond security and IT, teams like legal and communications, business leaders, and executives should participate. This enables the exercise to reflect how real incidents are managed across the organization.

Q: Why is talking through recovery not enough?

A: Discussion can highlight plans, but only real testing proves whether systems actually can be restored cleanly and quickly. Practical validation is necessary to confirm recovery readiness.

Q: What defines a successful tabletop exercise outcome?

A: A strong exercise results in clear findings, assigned owners, and defined timelines for remediation. If these are missing, the exercise likely did not challenge the team enough.

Chris Bevil is Principal, Global Cyber Resilience & AI, at Commvault.

Every organization that has ever failed a recovery – and there are more than anyone publicly acknowledges – had one thing in common: They believed they could recover before they tried.

The belief came from somewhere. A completed tabletop exercise. A backup system that showed green. An annual disaster recovery test that passed. All of it documented. All of it, at some point, accurate. None of it current when the incident actually hit.

This is the confidence gap. And it is the gap that continuous recovery validation is designed to close.

What ‘Testing’ Actually Means in Most Organizations

Si le preguntas a la mayoría de los responsables de seguridad o de TI con qué frecuencia comprueban su capacidad de recuperación, la respuesta suele ser «una vez al año», a veces «dos veces al año». La prueba consiste en restaurar un subconjunto de sistemas a partir de backup un entorno de pruebas, comprobar que se inician correctamente y elaborar un informe. A veces se realiza también un ejercicio de simulación junto con ello. Lo que este tipo de pruebas no hace: validar que los datos de la copia de seguridad estén libres de malware. Confirmar que la secuencia de recuperación funciona para servicios interdependientes. Probar la recuperación de identidades, algo esencial cuando el ataque se ha producido a raíz de credenciales comprometidas. Confirmar que el equipo que llevaría a cabo la recuperación conoce los manuales de procedimientos actuales. Ni aportar pruebas lo suficientemente significativas como para convencer a un regulador, un auditor o un consejo de administración de que la capacidad de recuperación es real y está al día. En resumen, valida un momento concreto. Las operaciones de resiliencia (ResOps) requieren que la validación sea un estado continuo.

El modelo de validación continua

Continuous recovery validation is not a single test run more frequently. It is a set of integrated practices that produce ongoing, evidence-based proof of recoverability across critical services.

Automated backup integrity scanning. Every backup, continuously evaluated for anomalies, encryption patterns, and malware signatures. Not at restore time – before restore time. The goal is to know whether your recovery points are clean before you need them, not during an incident.

Scheduled Cleanroom Recovery drills. Bi-annual at minimum, restoring from immutable backup points into an isolated Cleanroom Recovery environment – not production, not a production-adjacent test environment, but a genuinely isolated space where forensic analysis can happen without risk of reinfection. These drills produce documented evidence of recoverability against defined impact tolerances.

Identity recovery validation. With el uso indebido de credenciales es el vector de ataque más habitual, Active Directory and Entra ID recovery must be tested alongside data recovery. Organizations that restore systems without restoring a verified-clean identity layer may find attackers re-enter through the same door.

Service Resilience Indicator (SRI) dashboards. SRIs – continuous signals drawn from backup telemetry, dependency mapping, and test results – that give CISOs, CIOs, and boards a live view of recoverability posture. Not a point-in-time report. An ongoing operational signal.

Each of these practices feeds what Deloitte and Commvault call the resilience backlog: a continuously updated, prioritized list of gaps identified through testing and tracked to resolution. It is the mechanism by which validation drives improvement rather than just producing reports.

¿Qué significa el «tiempo medio hasta la recuperación de la limpieza»?

Traditional recovery metrics – recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) – measure speed and data recency. They say nothing about whether the data being restored can be trusted. Mean Time to Clean Recovery (MTCR) fills that gap: It measures the time required to restore data that is verifiably clean, not just technically available.

MTCR matters because in a ransomware incident, the adversary’s goal is often to corrupt recovery options, not just encrypt production systems. An organization that restores quickly but restores from a compromised backup has not recovered. It has re-infected itself.

Building MTCR into your resilience measurement framework, alongside RTO and RPO, changes what you optimize for and what you report to the board. Speed plus recency plus integrity: that is the complete picture of recovery readiness.

Resiliencia que puedes demostrar

The organizations that navigate cyber disruptions with the least damage share one characteristic: They treat recovery capability as something to be continuously demonstrated, not periodically asserted. They know their MTCR. Their SRIs are current. Their cleanroom recovery has been tested in the last 90 days.

That posture is not the result of better technology alone. It is the result of an operating discipline – ResOps – that makes resilience continuous, measurable, and governable. Commvault’s platform provides the technical foundation: clean recovery, automated validation, and the unified visibility across data, identity, and services that ResOps requires at scale.

For the organizational side of that equation – how to define impact tolerances, align executive leadership, and build the governance structure that sustains the discipline – see the Deloitte companion blog, «La conversación sobre resiliencia que tu consejo de administración aún no está manteniendo. And for the complete ResOps framework, including the six ResOps domains and the measurement model that ties technical recoverability to board-level accountability, read the joint whitepaper:«De la viabilidad mínima a la resiliencia operativa: ResOps en la práctica.Bill O’Connell is Chief Security Officer at Commvault.

Puntos clave:

• Los ciberataques se dirigen cada vez más tanto a backup de producción como a backup , por lo que es fundamental contar con una recuperación limpia y verificable.
• La detección integrada de anomalías y amenazas refuerza la resiliencia cibernética al identificar datos comprometidos, validar puntos de recuperación fiables y acelerar la restauración.
• Cuando se integran en los flujos de trabajo de protección de datos, las funciones de detección de anomalías y amenazas pueden ayudar a proporcionar las pruebas necesarias para recuperarse de forma rápida, segura y con confianza.

Por qué la ciberresiliencia depende de la detección integrada de anomalías y amenazas

Anomaly detection identifies unusual behavior in backup data that may indicate compromise. Threat detection identifies known malicious activity using signatures, heuristic analysis, and scanning techniques. Together, they help validate recovery points and enable clean data recovery.

For years, security leaders focused on preventing breaches. In today’s era of persistent attacks and AI-driven threats, organizations increasingly assume compromise and design systems that can withstand disruption and recover safely when it occurs.

Modern adversaries don’t always hide their presence – they reveal it when it serves their objective. Attackers try to infiltrate environments quietly, observe systems over time, and position themselves inside critical infrastructure. The moment an attack becomes visible is rarely the moment it begins; it is the moment the attacker chooses to act.

By then, compromised data may already be woven into backup copies. Integrated anomaly and threat detection can help organizations identify compromised backup data, validate clean recovery points, and assist recovery after a cyberattack.

For security and IT teams, the challenge is no longer simply detecting an attack but predicting and managing an attacker’s possible impact. Understanding what was affected, what remains trustworthy, and how the organization can recover safely without escalating business disruption is the solution.

This is why cyber resilience benefits tremendously from integrated anomaly and threat detection. When detection capabilities are embedded into data protection and recovery workflows, they help provide the shared intelligence that teams need to identify compromised data, validate trusted recovery points, and guide response decisions with evidence rather than guesswork.

This approach aligns with the emerging ResOps™ operating model, que está en auge, en el que los equipos de seguridad, TI y recuperación trabajan partiendo de una visión global compartida y de rutas de recuperación validadas para responder juntos a los incidentes.

La nueva realidad: la recuperación requiere pruebas, no suposiciones

Traditional threat detection tools focus on spotting threats along the perimeter. But once attackers are inside, visibility can become fragmented and determining which systems and data have been affected becomes a challenge.

Further, attackers increasingly target backup environments specifically to undermine recovery. And the moment organizations cannot confidently prove that backups remain untouched, suspicion becomes unavoidable. The result is uncertainty. Restore quickly and risk reinfection? Or delay recovery while investigating which copies remain trustworthy? IT teams are forced to guess which data is safe while downtime accumulates.

By building intelligence directly into data protection workflows, anomaly and threat detection helps transform recovery from a reactive guess into a disciplined, evidence-driven process. These capabilities can help organizations pinpoint tampered copies, validate data cleanliness, and assemble the most recent uncompromised recovery points – helping you accelerate cyber recovery and reduce operational impact.

Detección de anomalías: tu primera señal de lo desconocido

Anomaly detection acts as a sentinel, guarding your protected data integrity. It establishes a baseline of normal behavior – file sizes, growth patterns, deduplication changes, access attempts – and alerts teams when something deviates from that norm. These deviations can surface signs of silent tampering long before malware signatures do. In an era of novel and polymorphic threats, anomaly detection helps offer what static tools can’t: visibility into the unexpected.

Detección de amenazas: defensa específica contra actividades maliciosas conocidas

While anomalies reveal what’s unusual, threat detection exposes what is malicious. By scanning protected data directly for ransomware, malware signatures, encryption patterns, and custom indicators of compromise (IoCs), threat detection helps validate that the data you protect is not already compromised.

Por qué es importante un enfoque combinado

Ni la detección de anomalías ni la de amenazas por sí solas ofrecen una visión completa. Juntas, conforman una estrategia de defensa en profundidad: la detección de anomalías puede señalar señales sospechosas, mientras que la detección de amenazas puede profundizar más para verificar si hay intenciones maliciosas. Esta combinación ayuda a las organizaciones a distinguir las anomalías inofensivas de las verdaderas brechas de seguridad y a mantener datos fiables y validados para una recuperación rápida.

Meeting Today’s Challenges with Commvault® Cloud

Los atacantes se centran cada vez más en backup , y el malware oculto en backup puede aumentar el riesgo de reinfección durante la recuperación. Las organizaciones necesitan una validación basada en datos para garantizar una recuperación limpia y segura.Commvault Cloud addresses this by combining data protection workflows with anomaly detection, threat intelligence, AI-enabled analytics, and isolated clean instances. With anomaly and threat insights applied before, during, and after backup operations, Commvault can help empower organizations to recover faster, cleaner, and confidently.

Read the full white paper, “Can You Prove You’re Recoverable Right Now?”para obtener más información.

Preguntas frecuentes

Q: What is anomaly detection in data protection?

A: Anomaly detection identifies unusual behaviors – such as unexpected backup size changes or abnormal file activity – that may signal tampering, ransomware, or emerging threats within protected data.

Q: Why do CISOs need threat detection in their backup workflows?

A: Backup environments are now prime attacker targets. Threat detection helps prevent organizations from storing or restoring compromised data, which helps reduce reinfection risk and improve chances for clean recovery.

Q: How does Commvault help enable clean data recovery?

A: Commvault uses AI-assisted threat scanning, encryption detection, custom IoC matching, and cyber deception to help validate backup integrity and assemble the most recent uncompromised data for rapid recovery.

Q: Why combine anomaly and threat detection?

A: Anomalies identify the unknown; threat detection validates the known. Together, they provide comprehensive visibility into suspicious activity, helping enable faster investigation and more confident data recovery.

Lista de Paulinees directora de marketing de producto en Commvault

Puntos Clave

• Rising operational disruption makes scalable resilience essential, but organizations commonly fall into traps like seeking “silver bullet” technology or relying on “hero worship” of individual experts.
• ResOps ofrece un marco escalable que integra a las personas, los procesos y la tecnología en ITOps, SecOps y DevOps.
• El apoyo de la alta dirección, a nivel de director general, ayuda a fomentar la responsabilidad y a dar prioridad a la resiliencia como disciplina estratégica.

Cyberattacks, cloud complexity, and AI-enabled threats are creating constant operational challenges for enterprises. To help meet business requirements in this increasingly disruptive environment, organizations need to move beyond separate recovery tools, teams, and plans to resilience as an integrated operating model.

In a recent webinar, Phil Goodwin, research vice president for IDC’s worldwide infrastructure programs, joined me for a fireside chat to explore how organizations can move beyond fragmented approaches to build resilience that scales.

Por qué las organizaciones necesitan un nuevo marco de resiliencia

As organizations engage in daily firefighting while keeping up with new technologies and addressing new initiatives, they rarely have time to step back and reassess whether their approaches still meet requirements. But as isolated incidents become systemic disruption, this conversation has become essential.

In a simpler era, organizations focused primarily on backup and recovery. Large-scale disruptions such as Hurricane Sandy brought disaster recovery onto the agenda. Intensifying cyberthreats like ransomware added cyber resilience and business continuity to the list. Each evolution brought new capabilities, but many organizations simply bolted new approaches onto what they were already doing rather than addressing these expanding requirements holistically.

When separate teams manage different pieces with different tools and policies, gaps may emerge that can slow recovery. Despite years of investment in cybersecurity, organizations are still struggling with recovery.

More recently, AI has accelerated the urgency for a more integrated approach by reshaping both threats and defenses. Despite increasing AI investments, many businesses are delaying AI rollouts due to ongoing concerns about governance and security vulnerabilities.

On the other side of the cyber front, bad actors are using AI to create deepfakes, target users with more sophisticated and convincing phishing, and exploit vulnerabilities at scale.

Resilience operations – ResOps – treats resilience as a continuous operating discipline rather than a collection of separate tools and teams. By bringing together ITOps, SecOps, and DevOps under a unified framework, ResOps helps transform resilience to keep pace with systemic disruption.

Cómo evitar los errores más comunes en la planificación de la resiliencia

Even organizations that recognize the need for change often fall into traps. One is the “silver bullet” problem, which focuses on technology as the solution. Leaders want to believe that buying the right tools will solve everything, but technology alone can’t deliver positive business outcomes without proper integration and process.

“Hero worship” is another common pitfall – relying on talented staff members with expertise residing in their heads rather than in documented processes. Heroism can’t scale, and reliance on specific individuals creates vulnerability when people leave or responsibilities shift.

To move past these traps, you have to think differently about your operating model. Instead of focusing primarily on technology and people, consider the team you’ll need to build, including executive sponsorship, IT operations and security leadership, and senior leaders from the business side.

The team’s charter should focus on defining business outcomes first: What does resilience need to achieve for the organization? What KPIs, SLAs, and processes should be established to meet these requirements?

Desarrollar operaciones de resiliencia de arriba abajo

Como prioridad a nivel de la junta directiva, la resiliencia requiere el apoyo de los más altos cargos. Las operaciones de resiliencia (ResOps) cobran mayor impulso cuando el director general se implica, ayudando a establecer las prioridades en materia de recursos e impulsando la rendición de cuentas en toda la organización. Con el respaldo de la dirección, los altos directivos —como el director de sistemas de información (CIO), el director técnico (CTO), el director de seguridad de la información (CISO) y los directores generales— pueden encargar a su personal la puesta en marcha.

Este enfoque se puede adaptar a organizaciones de cualquier tamaño. Incluso las empresas pequeñas y medianas pueden formar equipos multifuncionales que incluyan a las partes interesadas del negocio, a los equipos de TI y al personal encargado de la seguridad de los datos y de la red. A medida que crecen, esta estructura puede adaptarse a sus necesidades, incorporando personal en disciplinas específicas relacionadas con la resiliencia, al tiempo que se mantiene un enfoque integrado en toda la cadena de operaciones de resiliencia. ResOps refleja la forma en que los equipos de operaciones de TI, SecOps y DevOps deben trabajar juntos dentro de las organizaciones. La recuperación de datos y la seguridad de los datos se han alineado tan estrechamente que, en IDC, los investigadores de estas disciplinas colaboran ahora con frecuencia en proyectos con clientes. Ahora hay que diseñar las aplicaciones teniendo en cuenta a los atacantes, incorporando arquitecturas de «confianza cero» y partiendo de la base de que algo va a salir mal. ResOps ofrece el marco necesario para esta convergencia, uniendo las herramientas de seguridad y de operaciones en un modelo unificado para hacer frente a amenazas e interrupciones de todo tipo.

ResOps como marco común para el sector

ResOps is an operating model, not a product, and can benefit companies regardless of the specific tools they use. As Phil observed during our chat, “It really requires that community involvement where people pitch in from different perspectives, different vendors, different organizations, and different teams, just like DevOps or SecOps.”

For organizations struggling with constant disruption and the growing complexity of AI-enabled threats and defenses, ResOps offers a path beyond fragmented resilience approaches. By bringing together people, processes, and technology in a unified operating model, ResOps turns fragmented recovery efforts into enterprise-wide readiness.

Watch my charla informal completa con Philpara ver cómo ResOps puede ayudarte a desarrollar una resiliencia empresarial que se adapte a tus necesidades.

Preguntas frecuentes

Q: What is resilience operations (ResOps)?

A: ResOps is an operating model that integrates IT operations, security operations, and DevOps into a continuous discipline. Rather than treating disaster recovery, cyber resilience, and business continuity as separate capabilities, ResOps brings people, processes, and technology together under a unified framework to help create scalable enterprise resilience.

Q: Why is executive sponsorship important for cyber resilience?

A: Executive sponsorship – ideally at the CEO level – helps drive accountability and priority for resilience initiatives across the organization. This top-down support is essential for organizations trying to move beyond fragmented approaches to integrated resilience operations.

Q: Can small and midsized organizations implement ResOps?

A: Yes. ResOps applies across organization sizes. The framework scales in complexity as organizations grow, making it accessible to mid-market firms while remaining effective for large enterprises.

Q: Why do IT and security teams need to work together for resilience?

A: When IT operations, security operations, and DevOps teams collaborate rather than work in silos, organizations can help build more resilient infrastructure to address evolving threats.

Q: How should organizations get started with resilience operations?

A: Start at the top by securing executive sponsorship at the CEO level. Next, form a cross-functional team including IT operations, SecOps, and business stakeholders, and have them define the business outcomes resilience needs to deliver for your business. Conduct a threat assessment to understand the risks you need to address. Only after these foundational steps should organizations focus on selecting technologies and developing detailed processes.

Chris Mierzwa is Senior Director, Portfolio Marketing, at Commvault.