A Cyberattack Won’t Start With a Warning. It Starts With Your Files.

October marks Cybersecurity Awareness Month. It’s a timely reminder that the files you touch, share, and rely on every day often hold your most valuable data and are exactly what attackers are after.

Unstructured data, like spreadsheets, documents, logs, and backups, makes up the majority of your business data. That’s what makes it the prime target for ransomware.

Ransomware moves fast — encrypting data, escalating access, and sabotaging recovery before your teams can even assess the blast radius. It zeroes in on unstructured data for a reason. Because that’s where your business-critical files live. When attackers go after shares, snapshots, and backups, they’re trying to cut off the lifelines your team depends on to fight back. For organizations managing large-scale NAS environments, the pressure to stay resilient has never been greater.

Why File Storage Architecture Matters More Than Ever

Analysts expect the NAS market to triple by 2032 as organizations race to store and harness the surge of unstructured data driving analytics, AI, and intelligence at every level of the business. This same growth makes NAS an even higher-value target for attackers, which is why cybersecurity has become a core requirement for modern file storage. The architecture behind your NAS determines whether it strengthens your defenses or becomes the weak link.

To build real resilience into your data infrastructure, modern file storage must offer a range of protections, including:

• Immutable snapshots that lock data at write and prevent tampering.
• WORM (write once, read many) enforcement at the hardware level to meet compliance and retention mandates.
• End-to-end encryption using certified modules for data in flight and at rest.
• Granular access controls with MFA and role-based permissions to limit exposure.
• Active-active clustering for seamless failover and uninterrupted service.
• Intelligent tiering to move data securely across hybrid environments with full policy control.

These have become foundational requirements for any enterprise serious about cyber resilience. These days, that covers almost everyone that faces an ongoing mix of persistent threats, high-stakes decisions, and the expectation to stay online 24/7, no matter what.

File Storage Built for Whatever Comes Next

We’ve all seen what ransomware can do. Not just in the headlines, but in our system logs, midnight escalations, and gut-check alerts that turn routine nights into firefights. There’s no breathing room in data security. Your teams are caught in the loop, scanning, patching, and responding. Knowing that one missed alert could be the difference between containment and chaos.

That’s why independent validation matters. In a recent evaluation of 23 enterprise NAS platforms, the Data Center Intelligence Group (DCIG) named Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One File (VSP One File) a TOP 5 Cybersecure NAS Solution for 2025–2026. The analysis focused on architecture, resilience, data protection, performance, and support; the core areas that define enterprise-grade infrastructure.

The report goes into a lot of detail about what sets VSP One File apart, including:

• Deep resilience across identity, data, and infrastructure layers.
• 100% Data Availability Guarantee, even during failures.
• 4:1 Effective Capacity Guarantee, making scale-out immutability financially viable.
• Integration with leading security ecosystems like CyberArk, Splunk, Varonis, Trend Micro and Broadcom, to help teams monitor and defend the entire chain of access.
• Built-in hybrid cloud tiering, enabling secure, policy-driven movement of data across environments, with support for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba, and private object storage solutions.
• Compliance-ready immutability, independently validated by Cohasset for SEC, FINRA, CFTC, and MiFID II retention rules.
• End-to-end protection through encryption, immutability, MFA, RBAC, and WORM, ensuring data remains secure and unchanged throughout its lifecycle.
  

It also went well beyond just checking off the basic boxes, examining how each platform is built, holds up under stress, and how quickly it can bring operations back online.

In VSP One File’s case, the results showed an architecture designed to consolidate environments, seal-off and defend vulnerable paths, keep operations online, and meet strict regulatory requirements. And all while scaling easily and efficiently across hybrid cloud environments.

Getting Ahead of Ransomware Starts With the Right Foundation

When recovery hinges on the architecture beneath you, only a platform with safeguards built into every layer can stand its ground. There’s no reset button in a ransomware attack. You either have a foundation that holds, or you don’t.

As part of the broader VSP One data platform, VSP One File delivers continuous access, resilience, and unified management across your entire data estate. At the same time, reinforcing data integrity and availability at scale while closing the gaps that attackers exploit.

File Data Won’t Defend Itself. But the Right Infrastructure Can.

Ransomware crews are actively targeting file shares and backups to break business from the inside. If your storage layer folds under pressure, you don’t just lose data. You lose uptime, burn revenue, and put customer confidence on the line.

So if your team is designing for resilience, reducing risk, or preparing for AI-driven workloads, now is the time to evaluate the foundation your data runs on.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is the perfect time to learn more about why VSP One File was named a TOP 5 Cybersecure NAS Solution by DCIG, and how it can help your organization stay ready, online, and resilient.

Read More

• Analyst Content: DCIG TOP 5 for Cybersecure NAS Solutions – VSP One File
• Webinar: Resilience by Design - Reducing Data Risk, Downtime, and Regulatory Exposure - With DCIG
• White Paper: From Risk to Resilience - VSP One File is the Gateway to Your Data’s Future
• Top 10 Reasons Why: Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One File
• eBook: Unbreakable Core -  VSP One Guarantees. Proven Results. Guaranteed Outcomes
• Blog: When Compliance Is Questioned, It Isn’t What You Say. It’s What Your Data Can Prove