System and method for critical virtual machine protection

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2020012572-A1
Application number	US-201816028679-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jul 6, 2018
Priority date	Jul 6, 2018
Publication date	Jan 9, 2020
Grant date	—

Abstract

A backup agent for facilitating restorations of virtual machines includes a persistent storage and a backup/restoration policy updater. The persistent storage stores backup/restoration policies. The backup/restoration policy updater identifies a change of a label associated with data of a production host and, in response to identifying change in the label, identifies a virtual machine of the virtual machines associated with the data; performs a threat analysis of the identified virtual machine to determine a new security policy for the identified virtual machine; and updates a policy of the backup/restoration policies associated with the identified virtual machine based on the identified new security policy.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A backup agent for facilitating restorations of virtual machines, comprising:
a persistent storage that stores backup/restoration policies; and a backup/restoration policy updater programmed to:
identify a change of a label associated with data of a production host;
in response to identifying change in the label:
identify a virtual machine of the virtual machines associated with the data;
perform a threat analysis of the identified virtual machine to determine a new security policy for the identified virtual machine; and
update a policy of the backup/restoration policies associated with the identified virtual machine based on the identified new security policy.

2 . The backup agent of claim 1 , wherein the backup/restoration policy updater is further programmed to:
perform a backup of the identified virtual machine using the updated policy to store a backup of the identified virtual machine in a backup storage of a plurality of backup storages.

3 . The backup agent of claim 2 , wherein the updated policy specifies a first number of users that are credentialed to initiate performance of the backup, the policy specifies a second number of users that are credentialed to initiate performance of the backup, and the first number is smaller than the second number.

4 . The backup agent of claim 2 , wherein the updated policy specifies a first number of target storage locations for storage of the backup, the policy specifies a second number of storage locations for storage of the backup, and the first number is smaller than the second number.

5 . The backup agent of claim 1 , wherein the backup/restoration policy updater is further programmed to:
perform a restoration of the identified virtual machine using the updated policy to restore the identified virtual machine.

6 . The backup agent of claim 5 , wherein performing the restoration of the identified virtual machine returns the identified virtual machine to a prior state.

7 . The backup agent of claim 1 , wherein performing the threat analysis of the identified virtual machine to determine the new security policy for the identified virtual machine comprises:
obtaining a new virtual machine tag for the identified virtual machine based on the change of the label associated with the data of the production host.

8 . The backup agent of claim 7 , wherein the label associated with the data of the production host is set by a user of the identified virtual machine.

9 . The backup agent of claim 7 , wherein the label associated with the data of the production host is based on an importance of the data to a user of the identified virtual machine.

10 . The backup agent of claim 7 , wherein performing the threat analysis of the identified virtual machine to determine the new security policy for the identified virtual machine further comprises:
obtaining a new security classification for the identified virtual machine based on the obtained new virtual machine tag.

11 . The backup agent of claim 10 , wherein performing the threat analysis of the identified virtual machine to determine the new security policy for the identified virtual machine further comprises:
identifying a security policy corresponding to the obtained new security classification.

12 . The backup agent of claim 11 , wherein the identified security policy specifies a limited set of users authorized to initiate performance of a restoration of the identified virtual machine.

13 . The backup agent of claim 11 , wherein the identified security policy specifies a limited set of users authorized to initiate performance of a backup to obtain a backup of the identified virtual machine.

14 . The backup agent of claim 13 , wherein the identified security policy further specifies a second limited set of storage locations where the backup of the identified virtual machine may be stored.

15 . The backup agent of claim 13 , wherein the identified security policy further specifies a third limited set of backup types of the backup of the identified virtual machine.

16 . The backup agent of claim 1 , wherein each policy of the backup/restoration policies comprises a respective security policy for performing a backup or restoration workflow.

17 . A method for facilitating restorations of virtual machines, comprising:
identifying a change of a label associated with data of a production host that hosts at least one virtual machine of the virtual machines; in response to identifying change in the label:
identifying a virtual machine of the virtual machines associated with the data;
performing a threat analysis of the identified virtual machine to determine a new security policy for the identified virtual machine, wherein performing the threat analysis comprises applying a second tag to a virtual machine based on the change of the label associated with the data of the production host; and
updating a policy of backup/restoration policies associated with the identified virtual machine based on the identified new security policy.

18 . The method of claim 17 , wherein each policy of the backup/restoration policies comprises a respective security policy for performing a backup or restoration workflow.

19 . A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer readable program code, which when executed by a computer processor enables the computer processor to perform a method for facilitating restorations of virtual machines, the method comprising:
identifying a change of a label associated with data of a production host that hosts at least one virtual machine of the virtual machines; in response to identifying change in the label:
identifying a virtual machine of the virtual machines associated with the data;
performing a threat analysis of the identified virtual machine to determine a new security policy for the identified virtual machine; and
updating a policy of backup/restoration policies associated with the identified virtual machine based on the identified new security policy.

20 . The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 19 , wherein each policy of the backup/restoration policies comprises a respective security policy for performing a backup or restoration workflow.

Assignees

• Emc Ip Holding Co Llc

Inventors

• Chopra Shelesh
• Yadav Sunil
• Sharma Manish

Classifications

• G06F21/44

  Program or device authentication · CPC title

• G06F21/60

  Protecting data · CPC title

• H04L63/20

  for managing network security; network security policies in general (filtering policies H04L63/0227) · CPC title

• H04L63/1433

  Vulnerability analysis · CPC title

• G06F11/1469

  Backup restoration techniques · CPC title