Why Zero Trust Storage + Eight 9s Availability Is Non-negotiable

We’ve entered a new era where AI is accelerating every part of business—innovation, decision‑making, and unfortunately, cyberthreats. That means right now is the most critical moment for IT and business leaders to strengthen resilience. The window for “getting ahead of risk” is no longer measured in months or years; it’s measured in minutes. Every organization eventually faces that turning point—an outage narrowly avoided, an audit finding that wasn’t on anyone’s radar, or a ransomware scare that lands uncomfortably close. Today, those moments carry even higher stakes because attackers move faster, automation amplifies impact, and business operations depend on uninterrupted digital performance.

At the same time, adversaries are targeting backups before primary systems. Auditors are demanding real proof—not just policy statements or encryption checkboxes. And operations teams are drowning in tools, complexity, and manual processes. Meanwhile, the business expects zero disruption, zero excuses.

This is the moment when the question shifts from “Are we protected?” to “Are we protected enough for the world we operate in right now?” And in this environment, Zero Trust storage and eight9s availability are no longer optional—they are foundational pillars of enterprise resilience.

Modern resilient storage isn’t just about fast arrays or encrypted drives. It’s about provable cryptography, clean recoverability under pressure, breach containment, and the ability to keep mission‑critical systems online with near‑zero downtime. It requires a storage foundation—like Hitachi Vantara’s VSP One Block High End—where security and availability work in lockstep rather than competing for resources.

Below are the steps organizations can take today to harden their posture for this AI‑driven era—ensuring Zero Trust, guaranteeing availability, enabling clean recovery when it matters, and finally simplifying operations instead of adding to the overload.

Auditability by Design, Not by Effort

Regulators and auditors are asking for more than just, “Is your data encrypted with AES‑256?” these days. They want to see how your cryptography actually works — things like entropy, key storage, TLS settings, and audit trails. The good news is that validations like FIPS 140‑3 and Common Criteria (CC) give you that proof automatically by independently checking the modules, controls, and behaviors behind the scenes.

When your storage and data‑protection setup uses FIPS 140‑3 Level 2–validated modules and CC‑aligned TLS/audit configs, audits get a whole lot easier. Instead of digging in to verify every detail, auditors can simply confirm what the validated modules already guarantee. Evidence is produced for you — standardized logs, crypto attestations, clear control boundaries — so there’s no need to explain one‑off crypto implementations, and overall risk scoring goes down.

Companies that move to validated crypto and centralized logging often see big wins: less audit effort, faster recertification, and smoother compliance overall. Forrester TEI studies of Zero Trust setups even report measurable drops in the time and cost of managing compliance as part of the broader ROI.

How VSP One Block High End (BHE) improves auditing processes:

“We simply cannot afford downtime. On the one hand, this would cause severe delays to the water treatment process, but we could also incur significant financial penalties. So, when our previous storage environment was approaching the end of its service life, we looked for a solution that would deliver the performance, scalability and resilience we need to minimize risk and ensure our operations run smoothly round the clock.” - Juan Ochoa, Managing Director of the Plant, Aquiris

Clean, Fast, and Fail Safe‑ Recovery

Attackers increasingly target storage, backups, and identity providers first, which means recovery fails when you need it most. According to a 2025 study by Verizon Business, ransomware is present in ~44% of breaches, with exploited edge/VPN vulnerabilities rising sharply. Plus, third ‑party exposure has doubled year-over‑-‑year, compounding blast radius and recovery complexity.

What can be done to change the math? Immutable data snapshots and anomaly detection.

Because attackers now try to corrupt backups first, immutability is now last line of defense, turning recovery into a contractual outcome instead of a best ‑effort. This is an intelligent step toward a quick, clean recovery since immutable snapshots and object lock controls keep “known‑ ‑good” copies recoverable even with admin compromise.

How VSP One Block High End (BHE) helps maintain a line of defense:

“When it comes to availability, the difference between our old platform and VSP One Block is huge. We can now restart our SAP databases 50% faster, complete maintenance within 30 minutes, and automatically fail over between sites using GAD. It’s a major leap forward for uptime and resilience.” - Petr Pokorný, Head of IT Operations, HOPI Logistics

Operational Overhead Reduction

Think of complexity as a tax. Traditional perimeter-based setups tend to pile on more tools, more dashboards, more policies, and more handoffs than anyone really wants to manage. Zero Trust takes a different approach: by consolidating‑ platforms and removing hardware dependencies and manual segmentation, it simplifies operations and cuts overall cost—while also reducing the number of incidents teams have to chase down.

A study by the International Journal of Computer Applications on Zero Trust rollouts found 39% faster response times, 75% fewer incidents, and 70% less downtime compared to traditional architectures. Forrester TEI analyses also consistently show 50%+ reductions in admin and help‑desk workloads in organizations using Zero Trust stacks, along with big gains in audit and compliance efficiency — a huge drop in repetitive, day-to‑day operational work.

What to Ask Your Teams (and Vendors) This Quarter

1. Can we prove crypto, or just claim it? To answer the question, inventory FIPS validations (140‑3 Level 2 or above) and Common Criteria claims tied to TLS/audit. Require CMVP/NIAP references in purchase orders and asset registers.
2. Are our snapshots truly immutable and anomaly c‑hecked? To answer the question, validate immutability policies, lock modes, and anomaly baselines. Test a clean restore under “assume breach‑.”
3. Where can we retire hardware and policies? To answer the question, map appliances and overlapping controls that Zero Trust can absorb, then quantify the run rate‑ savings and headcount hours reclaimed.
4. Are we insulating operations from third party‑ failures? To answer the question, review active-active designs, quorum placement, and dependency isolation to avoid MGM/‑Changestyle‑ ripple effects.

Innovation’s Most Powerful Data Engine

Cybersecurity without strong availability results in downtime. Availability without clean data‑ recovery results in risk. Organizations need both.

Hitachi Vantara’s VSP One BHE architecture embodies this shift: bringing together Zero Trust security, eight9s availability, and contractual clean‑ data recovery guarantees to ensure business operations remain‑ both continuous and trustworthy, even amid cyber events.

Learn more about how VSP One BHE can transform your business and drive what's next — with enterprise-grade storage built for the AI era.