Commvault adds AI-powered automation for cleaner, safer recovery

Commvault has released new technologies aimed at helping enterprises recover from cyberattacks with cleaner, more complete, and highly automated processes. The updates, now available as part of the Commvault Cloud Unity platform, focus on addressing the challenges organisations face when recovering from incidents like ransomware attacks.

"It's a business-critical necessity to conduct clean recoveries. We're enabling that in a new and innovative way while automating recovery validation so that every customer can recover with confidence," said Pranay Ahlawat, Chief Technology and AI Officer at Commvault.

Backup vulnerabilities

A recent study from Sophos indicates that 94% of ransomware attacks now actively attempt to compromise backup storage, leaving organisations exposed even after implementing traditional recovery plans. Commvault is responding to this by integrating threat detection, removal, and validation across its suite of data recovery offerings.

Threat detection advancements

The enhanced Threat Scan solution uses artificial intelligence to identify, analyse, and isolate suspicious files in backup sets. This includes the ability to detect newly encrypted files and to search for specific Indicators of Compromise. These features are designed to identify the presence of ransomware or other malicious activity as it unfolds within protected data, reducing the risk of restoring compromised files after an attack.

Improving full recoveries

Enterprises recovering from cyber incidents often choose between restoring an older, known safe backup or risking the use of recent, potentially corrupted data. Commvault's new Synthetic Recovery capability uses AI techniques to detect and remove threats from backup data during restoration. The result is a restored data set with compromised elements removed, while preserving recent clean data wherever possible.

Automated cleanroom processes

The Cleanroom Recovery feature now includes automation tools designed to streamline the testing and validation of recovered data. Enterprises can configure runbooks to automatically build out and manage the cleanroom environments used for validating restored systems, reducing manual effort and accelerating the return to full production status.

Integrated recovery workflow

The sequential approach-Threat Scan for detection, Synthetic Recovery for removal, and Cleanroom Recovery for validation-creates an end-to-end workflow. This design aims to minimise manual intervention and the risk of reintroducing malware or data corruption during large-scale enterprise recoveries.

Analyst perspectives

"With data stored in multi-cloud environments, recovery efforts following a cyberattack can be challenging," said Debashis Singh, Chief Information Officer, Persistent Systems. "Commvault's unified and integrated resilience workflow has provided us with end-to-end coverage, further strengthening our data protection strategy. And with synthetic recovery, we have the power and control to make the most complete restorations possible."

Archana Venkatraman, Senior Research Director at IDC, commented: "With these new innovations, Commvault is directly addressing an enterprise need for fast, clean, and confident recovery at scale. These capabilities elevate the industry conversation by moving beyond backup hygiene to intelligent, automated restoration. It's a tangible example of how AI and data validation can work hand-in-hand to accelerate safe business continuity."