Aligned with the Detect, Protect, and Recover functions of the NIST
Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0, DS8000 has long delivered protection
and rapid recovery through immutable Safeguarded Copy. With DS8000 G10
R10.1, IBM extends this strategy with inline, hardware‑assisted
ransomware threat detection at the I/O block level using IBM FlashCore
Module 4 (FCM4) and AI‑driven analytics.
Ransomware detection is performed directly within the FCM hardware,
inline with the data path, ensuring continuous analysis of every write
operation with no impact to application performance. Low‑level telemetry
is offloaded every few seconds to the Hardware Management Console
(HMC), where it is aggregated and analyzed using machine‑learning models
to identify early indicators of active data attacks - independent of
hosts, operating systems, or applications.
IBM is delivering DS8000 ransomware threat detection and alerting in
phases. In the current Phase 1 release with R10.1, detection logic is
active and telemetry‑based alerts are sent to IBM Support for model
training, tuning, and false‑positive reduction. In a future Phase 2
release, customers will receive alerts directly through multiple
notification channels, enabled via the DS8000 Security Group license.
Speaker: Brian Sherman, IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Advanced Technology Group (ATG) - Storage