Cobalt Iron Secures Patent for Cyber Event Analytics and Automated Security Optimizations

Cobalt Iron Inc. announced that it has been granted a U.S. patent for its technology for cyber event analytics and automated security optimizations. U.S. Patent Office patent No. 12088612, issued on Sept. 10, 2024, outlines ML techniques that improve and optimize cyber inspection and protection operations initiated by various security conditions and events.

The company will implement these techniques in its enterprise SaaS backup platform, Compass.

The threat of data loss due to cyberattacks continues to grow, with organizations struggling to ensure the accessibility and integrity of their data at all times. There is a pressing need for assistance in proactively detecting and responding to suspicious cyber threat activities, as well as gaining insights on the effectiveness of cyber protection, detection, and inspection operations.

The techniques outlined in this patent will primarily benefit CIOs, security officers, and other data custodians who are responsible for securing businesses against cyberattacks and maintaining the integrity of corporate data. By analyzing cyber inspection tools and data protection operations to determine which ones are the most appropriate and effective for given data or cyber threats, these techniques enable businesses to proactively and automatically adjust their use of these tools and operations to validate corporate data. As a result, organizations can experience lowered risk of undetected cyber security events, improved data protection responses to cyberattacks, and self-optimizing data validation operations.

This patent discloses techniques that, when fully implemented, will enable Compass to:

• Store ML training data associated with cyberattack events, inspection class policies, and data protection operational results
• Monitor for security conditions or events
• Determine and execute optimal inspection policies based on particular cyber events
• Execute a specific inspection and inspection level on particular data objects as specified by the optimal inspection policy
• Perform cyberattack forensics and historical analysis of data protection operations, then adjust future data inspection or data protection operations to perform in the event of a new cyberattack event
• Dynamically adjust cyber inspection operations based on attack indications
• Restrict access control to data objects similar to those attacked

What qualifies this technology for a patent is its novel approach to historical analysis of cyber events and the results of data inspection and data protection operations performed, as well as the automated adjustment of these operations for particular data objects in the event of specific cyberattacks. For example, Compass could analyze cyberattack patterns and results of previous data protection operations to determine more effective responses for new cyber events. Additionally, it could leverage ML training data to dynamically adjust the cyber inspection tools used for particular types of data in future operations. This patent also introduces automated adjustment capabilities, which will allow businesses to optimize their cyber inspection and data protection operations, thus improving cyber event detection and data validation processes.

This patent extends Cobalt Iron’s technology leadership in automated cyber security event analytics and responsiveness, as well as self-optimized data protection. It is related to and builds upon U.S. patent #11765187, granted on Sept. 19, 2023, further optimizing the selection of cyber inspection tools and inspection levels for various cyber events.

“Continual and ever-changing cyber threats continue to barrage organizations, leaving security administrators struggling with how to secure their environments, assess their security posture, and respond to attacks,” said Greg Tevis, VP, strategy, Cobalt Iron. “Cobalt Iron continues to raise the standard of data protection offerings with cyber event analytics and automated security optimizations. This patent is another example of that — providing improved cyber threat detection, event insights, and automated adjustments to data protection operations.”