Druva's Dru Investigate guards backup data from cyberattacks
The latest generative AI service from Druva, Dru Investigate, adds a new copilot option to its backup software that identifies anomalies and offers remediation suggestions.
Generative AI assistant Dru expanded its capabilities from data analysis to security.
Dru Investigate, the second copilot from backup software vendor Druva, added cybersecurity capabilities to bridge the skills and vocabulary gap between backup and security admins.
Druva made Dru Investigate available today for Druva customers at no additional cost. Druva sells a cloud data protection and management SaaS platform called the Data Security Cloud.
Generative AI copilots have become a perceived value-add by software vendors and a fixture within recent enterprise IT software releases. Along with Druva, backup vendors Cohesity, Commvault and Rubrik have packaged a generative AI copilot with their software within the last two years.
Copilots can offer employees an easier way to access information compared with more traditional company-created manuals or intranet sites, according to Phil Goodwin, an analyst at IDC. Security challenges can benefit from an information repository chatbot to ensure teams are effectively communicating what systems have been compromised and what remediation steps can be taken without affecting an organization's greater IT environment, he said.
"The low-hanging fruit [of generative AI] is how you provide better support," Goodwin said.
Are you wearing a hashed wire?
Dru isn't leaving its initial life behind, according to Stephen Manley, CTO at Druva.
Dru Investigate is a separate chatbot from Dru Assist, the prior Druva copilot rebranded last month after its early access launch last October. Dru Assist focuses on troubleshooting a customer's Druva environment for issues such as backup process failures.
We don't want to be one of those companies that does GenAI for GenAI's sake.
Stephen ManleyCTO, Druva
Dru Investigate is built on Amazon Bedrock and only uses an organization's backup metadata for monitoring, Manley said. The service looks for suspicious administrative actions or unusual activities related to data such as mass deletions. Users can ask the copilot for specific indicators of compromise and generate reports for security, backup and legal teams.
Users, however, must ultimately make and implement any action Dru Investigate suggests, Manley said.
Although Druva has released two generative AI copilots, Manley said the company will take time implementing future capabilities and services based on customer requests.
"We don't want to be one of those companies that does GenAI for GenAI's sake," Manley said. "We already have ideas [for AI products due to] problems customers have brought up that we can help with, but I can guarantee that won't be [ready] next month."
Backup is on the way
Generative AI chatbots aren't the main customer draw to products like Druva, according to Krista Case, an analyst at Futurum Group.
Instead, customers want features like Dru to assist in data protection and security management tasks. Services like these could help users whittle down root causes or issues behind a given problem faster than an individual employee could.
"I do see the most useful application of AI capabilities for data protection and security being sifting through vast amounts of information to pinpoint or uncover information more quickly and make correlations that otherwise would not be possible," Case said.
These chatbots can also help organizations maintain institutional knowledge, according to Jon Brown, an analyst at TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group. New employees could lean on such bots to acquaint themselves with an organization's methods and systems rather than needing to ask for guidance, he said.
"[New hires] can be productive much faster," Brown said. "You don't lose that expertise anymore. You capture effectively what your [employees] know."
Tim McCarthy is a news writer for TechTarget Editorial covering cloud and data storage.
