Earlier this year, HYCU recently unveiled R-Shield™, a cyber resilience fabric built-in for customers to protect their data estate from any threat. A key capability of this fabric is the R-Shield Scanner.
Backups used to be the safety net. But in today’s IT environment, they’ve become a prime target. According to the Sophos State of Ransomware Report 2024, “94% of organizations hit by ransomware in the past year said that the cybercriminals attempted to compromise their backups during the attack.”
Ransomware doesn’t just disrupt live systems. It infiltrates backups, too. If you restore compromised data, you’re not recovering; you’re restarting the attack. That’s a risk no IT or security leader can afford to take.
Organizations need more than just recoverability. They need recoverability with integrity. This is where R-Shield and the R-Shield scanner functionality comes in. It allows organizations to identify malware or ransomware in their source data without affecting backups or production systems, all while maintaining an incredibly low total cost of ownership (TCO).
In this blog, we’ll dive deeper into this powerful new R-Shield capability within R-Cloud But first, let’s take a closer look at where traditional backup vendors fall short.
The Gaps in Ransomware Scanning and Detection
Legacy detection models were designed for a different era. Today, they fall short in ways that directly impact your ability to protect your business:
- It happens too late. Scans that run post-backup, or even after the restore, leave you exposed when it matters most.
- It’s surface-level. Many tools rely on metadata analysis or basic anomaly detection alone. That might flag suspicious activity, but it can’t confirm a real threat.
- It creates noise. Without deeper content inspection, teams get overwhelmed by false positives. Alert fatigue sets in, and the real threats slip by.
- It’s too complex. Deploying and managing separate scan engines, extra VMs, and scripts is operational overhead your team doesn't need.
- It gives up control. Sending metadata (or even full datasets) offsite for analysis increases exposure and raises compliance concerns.
- It locks you in. Detection capabilities tied to specific hardware or cloud providers force architectural compromises and limit flexibility.
HYCU R-Shield™ Scanner: Something on secure and speed of detection
R-Shield Scanner is a dual method scanning engine that will detect indicators of compromise across your backups but will also scan the backup data using YARA Rules to find any malware that is residing on your systems
R-Shield Scanner brings threat detection home to your environment, to your backups, and in your control. It’s engineered to operate within the infrastructure you already trust. Because R-Shield is embedded directly into the HYCU platform, there’s no architectural sprawl or added operational complexity. Instead, it simply works—scanning your backup data where it lives.
Key Outcomes for IT & Security Teams
- Immediate visibility. Know what’s clean and what isn’t—without delay.
- Streamlined operations. R-Shield™ Scanner eliminates the need for additional tools, extra hardware, or new workflows.
- Actionable assurance. Data is validated before recovery, giving your team the clarity and confidence they need under pressure.
- Reduced noise, reduced cost. Fewer false positives mean more efficient investigation and more time spent on real issues.
- Secure by default. Scanning is performed entirely within your environment. No data leaves. No metadata is exported. Control stays with you.
How it works
HYCU takes a fundamentally different approach. We scan real data right at the source, before it ever leaves your environment. That means faster, continuous detection without compromising performance or control. There’s no vendor data access, no delayed uploads, and no centralized scanning that puts your data at risk. With support for any backup target, HYCU gives you tighter control and a dramatically reduced blast radius. Data stays where it belongs: in your hands.
Because R-Shield™ is lightweight by nature, requiring no additional infrastructure and no vendor lock-in—organizations gain meaningful protection with minimal disruption. It’s cyber resilience without the complexity, helping teams get ahead of threats without slowing down.
Using HYCU-owned snapshots, R-Shield conducts efficient, secure scans powered by multiple engines such as
- YARA-based content inspection, capable of identifying known and custom-defined malware signatures
- Change-rate anomaly detection, providing early alerts on behavioural anomalies and suspicious patterns
What’s Unique About R-Shield Scanner?
- Scans data in place without disruptions or delays.
Eliminate the need to move data for analysis. Everything happens where your data lives, saving time and reducing complexity. - You stay in control, always.
Your data never leaves your environment unless you choose to move it. No compromise on data ownership, sovereignty, or regulatory requirements. - View issues quicker. Detect sooner.
Advanced detection uncovers threats others miss, before they become a problem. Better visibility means faster, smarter response. - Be the first to know, with zero manual effort.
Real-time alerts flow directly into your existing SIEM and SOAR tools, so you can act fast, with context, using the platforms your team already knows. - Keep performance where it belongs: untouched.
Our scanning doesn’t compete with your production or backup processes. No slowdowns. No trade-offs. - Your storage, your choice.
Choose the storage that works best for your business, whether that’s in the cloud, on-prem, or both, giving ultimate flexibility & ensuring there is never a penalty for storing your data.
Conclusion: Purpose-Built Cyber Resilience
Built for Nutanix. Engineered for Cyber Resilience.
HYCU is already the #1 data protection platform for Nutanix, trusted by thousands of customers to protect critical workloads with the simplicity, intelligence, and performance that Nutanix environments demand. Now, with the addition of R-Shield, we’re taking that foundation further and setting a new standard: integrated cyber resilience, built for Nutanix from the ground up.
R-Shield isn’t an add-on or afterthought. It’s an always-on capability embedded in HYCU R-Cloud that helps you detect threats earlier, reduce risk across your environment, and recover faster—with confidence. And while this blog focused on detection, R-Shield is part of a broader strategy: one that brings threat visibility, data protection, and recovery under one roof, designed to work in concert with your Nutanix architecture.
Whether you're managing hybrid clouds, edge deployments, or multi-cloud environments, HYCU delivers cyber resilience that matches the flexibility and scale of Nutanix. No agents. No added complexity. Just intelligent protection that works the way you do.
Because in today’s world, clean recovery isn’t a luxury, it’s a requirement. And with HYCU, it’s built in.
R-Shield Scanner isn’t just a feature. It’s part of a cyber resilience fabric—an always-on, always-ready cyber resilience layer that’s fully embedded in HYCU R-Cloud.
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