What is a Data Clean Room?

Commvault Cleanroom provides security teams with an isolated environment to perform investigations, find gaps in defenses, and safely recover data without risk of contamination.

As cyber threats grow ever more pervasive and sophisticated, enterprise organizations must fully equip their security teams with a robust approach to cyber resilience, which should always include a comprehensive Commvault Cleanroom strategy.

Commvault Cleanroom provides a safe and isolated environment in which organizations can test their cyber recovery plans without disrupting production systems. The isolated environment also serves as a safe and sterile area for security investigations to determine the cause of attacks or find gaps in defenses to prevent future attacks. Cleanrooms can provide forensic analysis of known infected systems and offer insights into the root cause of an attack, a critical component to preventing future security incidents.

Organizations must continuously test their recovery approach to enable a frictionless, rapid return to business operations. Commvault Cleanroom should be a primary pillar in every organization’s cyber resilience strategy.

Commvault Cleanroom is a cloud-based step beyond traditional data recovery approaches because it designates a separate, controlled space to determine the cause of security issues, isolate the problem in a segregated area, and prevent data from being compromised.

Commvault Cleanroom is a multi-step process to prevent data contamination or loss following a breach. The process helps organizations more quickly recover from cyberattacks because there is a predefined set of processes. It also can be used to investigate malware code by restoring the infected systems in the isolated environment, providing critical analysis to understand how to prevent future attacks. Cleanrooms are useful in several scenarios, from validating backup image recovery to testing the recovery process and conducting forensic analysis.

A cleanroom is a controlled environment, a safe space away from any infected hardware or software. The cleanroom is a standalone environment separate from the production network that prevents contamination that could further damage storage devices or compromise the integrity of recovered data. The cleanroom is a critical component in the process to restore and recover data in a protected environment.

The Commvault cleanroom process involves multiple steps, including the following:

Identification and isolation: Identifying the data breach and isolating the impacted systems to prevent further spreading the breach and avoid contaminating the cleanroom.

Secure transfer: Transferring the compromised data using encrypted channels and protocols to uphold the confidentiality and integrity of the data during the transfer process.

Analysis and assessment: Analyzing the compromised data and identifying the compromised systems, data types, and vulnerabilities that led to the breach helps determine the extent of the breach.

Data recovery: Restoring clean or unaffected copies in the cleanroom environment to eliminate any malware or malicious code that might have been present.

Data validation and integrity checks: Performing validation and integrity checks upholds accuracy and completeness, verifies data consistency, and compares against known good backups.

Security measures: Implementing measures prevent re-infection and protect the recovered data and includes patching vulnerabilities, creating stronger access controls, and deploying advanced threat detection systems.

Testing and verification: Testing the systems and data for functionality and reliability, including performance and data integrity tests.

Transition to production: Transitioning the recovered data and systems should be planned and executed to minimize any potential risks or disruptions.

Organizations can apply Commvault Cleanroom in several scenarios to enable continuous business in the face of cyberattacks.

Testing Cyber Recovery 
Commvault Cleanroom simplifies and streamlines the process of testing cyber recovery plans in hybrid environments. Commvault Cleanroom allows organizations to recover workloads from multiple clouds, on-premises hypervisors, and physical servers to a common environment within the cleanroom. This eliminates the need to perform testing within each environment separately, saving time and resources.

Forensic Analysis of Known Infected Systems
In addition to cyber recovery testing, Commvault Cleanroom provides a safe environment for conducting forensic analysis of known infected systems. This analysis can help organizations identify the root cause of an attack, understand how the attackers gained access to their systems, and take steps to prevent future incidents.

Production Failover in the Event of a Breach
Commvault Cleanroom can serve as a production failover solution in the event of a breach. This means that if an organization’s production systems are disrupted by a cyberattack, they can quickly and easily recover their workloads to a clean environment within the cleanroom. This can help organizations minimize downtime and get their business back up and running quickly.

Disaster Recovery
Commvault Cleanroom is indispensable when storage devices sustain physical damage due to water, fire, impact, or manufacturing defects. The controlled cleanroom environment enables the recovery process to proceed without the risk of additional harm to the hardware.

Contaminant Sensitivity
Devices exposed to contaminants such as dust, dirt, or microscopic particles necessitate Commvault Cleanroom. This is particularly critical in industrial settings, laboratories, or cleanroom manufacturing facilities where even the slightest contamination can compromise data integrity.

Advanced-Data Recovery
In instances where standard data recovery methods falter, Commvault Cleanroom offers a specialized and advanced approach. This proves beneficial for critical data or situations warranting the allocation of additional resources to retrieve valuable information.

Commvault Cleanroom provides a safe and isolated environment for testing cyber recovery plans, conducting forensic analysis, and enabling continuous business if a breach does occur. Commvault Cleanroom can help organizations improve their cyber resilience by providing benefits such as:

Reduced risk of re-infection: Commvault Cleanroom provides a safe and isolated environment where workloads can be recovered without the risk of re-infection.

Enhanced security capabilities: Commvault Cleanroom can be used to identify and address security vulnerabilities in cyber recovery plans.

Simplified failover: Commvault Cleanroom can serve as a production failover solution in the event of a breach, allowing production operation recovery to be conducted within a sanitized environment.

Resilience to cyber threats: Commvault Cleanroom can help organizations become more resilient in the face of cyberattack and bad actors.

Commvault Cleanroom provides organizations with a powerful tool for comprehensive testing, forensic analysis, and production failover. By adopting Commvault Cleanroom, organizations can confidently test their cyber recovery plans, identify and remediate vulnerabilities, and maintain continuous business in the face of cyberattacks.