Clean Room Data Recovery from Cyber Attacks

Request a demo

Are you ready to get in touch?

Request a Call back

The benefits of a Clean Room Data Recovery from cyber attack: a path to secure restoration

With DORA, NIS2 and the FCA’s Operational Resilience regulations just around the corner, there has been a lot of talk about clean rooms.  But what are they and how can they help?  I’ve explored the key principles below.

It’s a sad fact – cyber attacks are here to stay, and what’s more, they will only get more sophisticated and harder to prevent.  Even with the most advanced threat detection and prevention technologies, there is little doubt that any environment can be 100% protected. After all, your security environment has to succeed every single time, but an attacker needs to succeed only once.

Despite the widespread acceptance that all organisations will become victims of a cyberattack, the aftermath can be just as devastating—with data breaches, financial loss, and reputational damage all contributing to the fallout. With this sobering reality in mind, over the last 12 months, we have seen more and more clients invest in clean room data recovery environments to help speed recovery when (not if) the worst happens.

But what exactly is clean room data recovery, and why is it an essential part of a post-cyberattack strategy? Let’s explore.

What is a Clean Room?

Clean room data recovery refers to restoring IT systems after a cyberattack within an isolated, secure, and controlled environment. This “clean room” is free from the potential remnants of malware, corrupted files, or backdoor vulnerabilities left behind by attackers.

In essence, it’s like restoring a contaminated operating system in a sterile lab environment to ensure that every component reintroduced to the production environment is secure, free of infections, and properly scrutinised.

The benefits of Clean Room Data Recovery

A clean room is a completely isolated environment, separate from the infected systems. By restoring operations within this secure bubble, organisations can ensure that attackers no longer have access to the infrastructure, even if they still control compromised systems or networks. This clean slate approach is critical to breaking the attack chain.

One of the primary risks following a cyberattack is the potential for reinfection. Malware, backdoors, or sleeper code often remain hidden within compromised systems, waiting to launch a secondary wave of attacks. In a clean room recovery, each piece of data and every system component is examined, scrubbed, and rebuilt in a secure environment before being reinstated, significantly reducing the chances of reinfection.

Clean room recovery allows IT teams and forensic experts to conduct thorough investigations of the attack. Isolating systems in a clean environment provides an opportunity to understand how the breach occurred, what vulnerabilities were exploited, and whether there are signs of ongoing activity from threat actors. This information is critical for improving future defences.

Instead of rushing to get everything back online, clean room recovery ensures that only critical systems and essential data are restored first. By focusing on high-priority assets and services, organisations can begin restoring operations while retaining non-essential components in isolation. This step-by-step approach minimises further exposure and helps maintain business continuity.

Following a cyberattack, many organisations are left questioning the integrity of their restored systems. Were all traces of the attack really removed? Are there lingering vulnerabilities that could be exploited again? Clean room recovery provides peace of mind by verifying that all restored systems are free from infection and vulnerabilities before they’re put back into production.

Cyberattacks can corrupt or encrypt essential business data, leaving it unusable or damaged. In a clean room environment, data is carefully restored from clean backups, and file integrity checks are performed to ensure that no corrupted files make their way back into the live systems. This significantly reduces the risk of data corruption spreading across restored networks.

Many industries are subject to strict regulations governing cybersecurity and data protection. A clean room recovery ensures that an organisation meets regulatory requirements for safe and secure restoration after a breach. Whether it’s compliance with FCA Operational Resilience, DORA, NIS2, or other industry standards, this method helps ensure adherence to legal and regulatory frameworks, potentially avoiding fines and legal liabilities.

If the recovery is poorly handled after a cyberattack, an organisation’s reputation can suffer. Quick fixes or improper restoration efforts can result in further data leaks or operational disruptions. By taking the time to perform a clean room data recovery, organisations demonstrate their commitment to secure practices, boosting confidence among clients, stakeholders, and customers.

Where do you start?

When designing a cyber recovery strategy, the critical cornerstone needs to be the definition of your minimum viable company.  This is defined by the systems and processes that need to be online for you to be back in business to deliver service to your clients.  Not all IT systems are created equal and whilst most will serve a purpose to your organisation as a whole, only a subset will be involved with the most critical nature of your business.

One way to look at this is to start with the Important Business Services highlighted for regulations such as FCA Operational Resilience, DORA or NIS2 – these are the systems and processes without which you would cease to trade or cause insufferable harm to your clients.  Taking these as a subset of your business operations, map out the underlying IT systems that support them.  Through this process, your minimum viable company will emerge, and it is this, rather than a full recovery of all systems, that you should focus on.

Make the Clean Room Representative

Much of the marketing over the last year or so has been focused on x86 VM-based environments, which are statistically likely the highest risk of infection.  Products from mainstream vendors like IBM’s Storage Defender, Commvault, Rubrik, Cohesity and others provide the capability to automate recovery into a clean room environment, and that’s where we have seen the initial investment within clients going.

However, when it comes to critical infrastructure and minimum viable companies, for many, that means IBM Power Systems is running IBM i or AIX.  With this in mind, we have seen clients implement standalone, isolated Power System clean room environments alongside their x86 counterparts to provide a full, representative recovery capability.

Build in Automation

Automation has been one of the key themes of especially the last two years within IT Operations as organisations grapple with larger estates and shrinking teams.  However, automation can bring incremental value through systematic use of a clean room to regularly restore and validate the integrity of backup copies, providing a catalogue of known good copies in case the worst happens.  Whilst it may not be feasible to build in automation to your clean room strategy, there are levels of maturity to aim for.  Automation using industry tooling such as Ansible will allow you to speed up recovery times and gain more confidence in known ‘good’ copies of your data that you can rely on.

The road to recovery after a cyber attack can have many challenges

Adopting a clean room data recovery approach can significantly streamline the process, enhancing both security and confidence in the restored systems. However, a clean room strategy should be representative for all of your critical systems and be regularly used and tested to ensure that the investment adds value to your cyber resilience posture.

Building a cohesive cyber resilience strategy takes time and needs to constantly evolve to cate new threats and business systems. However, keeping a firm view on defining your minimum viable company ensures that your investment in time and money is well spent—it could make all the difference between a temporary setback and a long-term catastrophe.

Read our blog, Strengthening Operational Resilience in preparation for DORA with Clean Rooms.

Click here
Interested in finding out more?

Request a demo or contact sales on: 0207 448 8500

Request a demo

Our Awards & Accreditations

See all Awards