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What’s NEW at Object First

Anthony Cusimano, Director of Solutions Marketing and one of the company’s earliest employees, provides a roadmap of the company’s rapid hardware and software evolution. Since its inception with OOTBI (Out-of-the-Box Immutability), Object First has expanded its portfolio to include the Ootbi 432, a 2U-node offering 432 terabytes of RAID 60 storage. A single four-node cluster can reach 1.7 petabytes, and through integration with Veeam’s Scale-Out Backup Repository (SOBR), users can scale beyond seven petabytes. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the company introduced the Ootbi Mini, a compact tower designed for edge locations and small businesses that delivers the same “absolute immutability” and honeypot features as the enterprise nodes but in a smaller, desk-friendly form factor. A major shift in the company’s business model is the introduction of a consumption-based subscription service alongside the traditional perpetual ownership model. This model is supported by a specialized sizing calculator designed to navigate the complexities of immutable storage retention. To ensure a seamless experience, Object First requires telemetry for subscription customers; this allows the company to proactively monitor usage and ship a larger “Box B” before a customer hits their capacity threshold. The transition is designed to be a white glove migration where data is moved to the new appliance and the old hardware is returned, providing a predictable OpEx cycle that avoids the steep cost jumps typically associated with traditional hardware refreshes. Looking toward the immediate future, Cusimano provided a sneak preview of the Fleet Manager platform, scheduled for official launch on May 6, 2026. Fleet Manager is a secure, cloud-based single pane of glass designed for managed service providers (MSPs) and large enterprises to monitor multiple Object First clusters across various global sites. Driven by telemetry, the tool provides unified visibility into system health, storage utilization, and honeypot alerts without ever touching or transferring actual backup data, maintaining strict zero-trust principles. Future updates to Fleet Manager aim to include centralized S3 bucket creation and remote firmware updates, further simplifying the management of large-scale immutable storage environments.

Object First Honeypot Demo with Geoff Burke

Senior Technology Advisor Geoff Burke showcases the integrated honeypot functionality built into the Object First appliance. Designed as a digital tripwire, the honeypot is physically hosted on the appliance but logically segmented to ensure security. It serves as an early warning system to detect lateral movement and reconnaissance efforts by attackers who typically probe the network to identify high-value targets. By mimicking juicy targets like a Veeam Windows Repository or SQL Server, the honeypot lures hackers into interacting with it, allowing the system to trigger immediate alerts before the actual backup data is compromised. The setup process is intentionally simple, requiring only two clicks within the security settings to enable the honeypot with either a static or DHCP IP address. Once active, the system monitors for unauthorized access attempts and can be configured to send notifications via email or Syslog to a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform or tools like Grafana. In a live demonstration, Burke uses the Zenmap utility to perform an “intense scan” against the honeypot’s IP. The Object First dashboard immediately lights up with events, capturing the attacker’s attempts to probe protocols such as RDP and specialized Veeam services. The honeypot provides both reactive and preventative benefits for organizations. Reactively, it ensures that IT admins are alerted to an intrusion at any hour—specifically targeting the “Friday night at 2:00 AM” window when many ransomware attacks begin. Preventatively, the visibility of these juicy but fake services can act as a deterrent. A sophisticated hacker who recognizes a cluster of high-value services on a single IP may realize they have hit a honeypot and retreat to avoid further detection. By integrating this feature for free, Object First adds a layer of proactive defense to their absolute immutability strategy, ensuring customers have the tools to stop an attack in its early stages.

How Object First Achieves Absolute Immutability

Geoff Burke, a senior technology advisor at Object First, outlines the architecture of their “Out-of-the-Box Immutability” (OOTBI) solution. Built on Zero Trust principles, the system secures data by assuming breach at every level, from production data and backup software to the primary storage target. The Object First appliance is a hardened Linux-based on-premises storage target that uses the S3 protocol to ensure there is zero access to destructive actions. By eliminating access to the command line and BIOS and strictly enforcing S3 Object Lock in compliance mode, the system ensures that once data hits the disk, it becomes immediately immutable with zero time to immutability, leaving no window for ransomware to alter or delete backup files. The core magic sauce of the performance and integration is the Smart Object Storage (SOS) API developed by Veeam. This API allows for deep integration between Veeam and the Object First cluster without the need for complex plugins, providing critical visibility into capacity and space that standard S3 protocols often lack. The SOS API enables smart entities, where Veeam breaks down backup jobs and intelligently allocates them to the best available node for load balancing and optimized throughput. This synergy allows the appliance to support a one-megabyte block size, specifically supercharging Veeam’s Instant Recovery feature, which allows businesses to run virtual machines directly from the backup storage at high speeds during a crisis. Object First positions its appliance as a simple, powerful alternative to complex DIY or cloud-only storage. While cloud storage is a vital secondary resilience zone, Burke emphasizes that local, on-premises storage is essential for meeting recovery time objectives, as cloud egress and latency can extend recovery windows to unacceptable levels. The appliance is designed to be racked and stacked with minimal configuration, using only three IP addresses and multi-factor authentication to reduce the risk of human error or tech debt. To further support overstretched IT teams, Object First includes a proactive telemetry service that monitors hardware health and storage capacity, ensuring that the last line of defense is always ready when a disaster strikes.

Why Object First is Best for Veeam

Object First was founded with the specific mission of creating a backup storage solution that is ransomware proof. The company focuses on addressing the primary vulnerability in data protection: the storage target. Since 96% of ransomware attacks target backup data to prevent recovery, Object First provides an intentionally hardened, immutable storage appliance designed specifically for Veeam Backup & Replication. As of January 2026 Object First has been officially acquired by Veeam, integrating their technology directly into the Veeam portfolio. The presentation introduces the concept of Zero Trust Data Resilience (ZTDR), which applies zero-trust principles specifically to the backup ecosystem. This framework emphasizes three core pillars: segmenting backup software from storage to minimize the blast radius of an attack, creating multiple resilient zones for data copies, and utilizing absolute immutability. Unlike standard immutable storage that can often be bypassed by administrative overrides or governance modes, absolute immutability ensures that once data is written, it cannot be altered or deleted by anyone, including the customer or the vendor, until the set retention period expires. This is achieved through the strict enforcement of S3 Object Lock in compliance mode and a hardware-integrated security layer. Object First offers a physical appliance that is designed to be secure, simple, and powerful. The device can be racked and configured in under 15 minutes because it limits user privileges by default, reducing the human attack surface and preventing accidental or malicious configuration changes. Security is further bolstered by eight-eyes validation for support and regular third-party penetration testing. On the performance side, the appliance leverages Veeam’s Smart Object Storage API to provide high-speed ingest and rapid recovery features like Instant VM Recovery. By focusing solely on being the best storage target for Veeam, Object First eliminates the trade-offs between security and performance found in DIY or general-purpose storage solutions.

Veeam Unleash – Enable AI and Advance Use Cases

Michael Cade and Emilee Tellez introduce the Unleash pillar, which focuses on empowering administrators to leverage backup data for AI-driven insights and advanced operational use cases. Veeam addresses the common challenge of garbage in, garbage out by providing a framework to ensure data hygiene before it is used to train models or fuel AI agents. The centerpiece of this initiative is Veeam Intelligence, an evolved natural language chatbot that moves beyond simple documentation scraping to interact directly with a customer’s specific backup environment. This allows users to generate complex reports, such as identifying failed jobs or malicious activity, through simple conversational queries, effectively transforming backup data from a dormant insurance policy into an active business asset. The presentation features a live demonstration of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a standard that Veeam is utilizing to bridge the gap between disparate IT management tools. By integrating Veeam Intelligence with other MCP-compatible servers, such as ServiceNow, administrators can automate entire workflows, from detecting an anomaly and generating an HTML executive report to opening a prioritized incident ticket, all within a single AI interface like Claude Desktop. While these capabilities are currently in technical preview, Veeam emphasizes that they are built with strict role-based access controls (RBAC) and data privacy guardrails, ensuring that only metadata leaves the customer’s site and that immutable backups remain protected from unauthorized modifications by AI agents. Looking toward the future of enterprise AI, Veeam is positioning itself to manage “agentic” risks by providing visibility into the “social network” of AI agents across the infrastructure. This includes dynamically discovering agents in platforms like AWS Bedrock and Microsoft Copilot to map their access to sensitive data and implementing LLM firewalls to prevent data leakage. In response to delegate concerns about agents making misinformed decisions, the speakers explain that Veeam is developing specialized internal agents, such as a Backup Admin Agent, to provide contextual guardrails and enforce secondary human approval for critical changes. By allowing customers to “bring their own model” (BYOM) or use integrated options, Veeam aims to provide a flexible, secure foundation for the next era of data-driven innovation.

Veeam Resilience – Protect Everything, Recover Anything

Rick Vanover and Emilee Tellez focus on the core of the Veeam portfolio: Resilience. The presenters track the evolution of data protection through three distinct generations of disasters, starting with Operational Resilience (fire, flood, and hardware failure), moving into Cyber Resilience (ransomware and targeted encryption), and arriving at the emerging frontier of AI Resilience. This new phase addresses risks such as over-privileged AI agents and non-human identities that can cause massive data deletion or corruption at hyperspeed. To combat these threats, Veeam introduced Agent Commander, an integration of their recent security acquisitions designed to discover AI agents, monitor their permissions via the Data Command Graph, and provide a surgical undo button for AI-driven mistakes. The presentation highlights how Veeam has pivoted toward “Left of the Boom” preparedness, specifically through its acquisition of Coveware. This integration provides deep forensic visibility into threat actor TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures), allowing Veeam to offer proactive scanning before, during, and after a backup. Emilee Tellez details a comprehensive defensive grid that includes an Incident API for EDR tool integration, Recon Scanners to identify brute-force attempts in production, and Veeam Threat Hunter, a proprietary signature-based detection engine. Furthermore, Veeam addresses the exfiltration trend in modern ransomware by emphasizing Data Sovereignty and immutable storage, claiming that no customer utilizing their 70+ immutable storage options and encryption has been unable to recover from an attack. To dispel the myth that its software is only for small businesses or bound to Windows, Veeam showcases its enterprise-grade Veeam Software Appliance. Now running on a hardened Rocky Linux distribution, the appliance comes pre-packaged with the DISA STIG security profile at no extra cost, which is a significant benefit for government and high-security sectors. The segment features a demonstration of the appliance’s Day 2 operations, highlighting mandatory, automated updates that cover everything from the operating system to the backup application itself. By combining this hardened infrastructure with Data Labs for testing and a portability engine that facilitates massive migrations between hypervisors like VMware and Hyper-V, Veeam positions itself as the most comprehensive end-to-end resilience platform in the 2026 market.

Veeam Security – Protect and Reduce Risk

In this presentation, Michael Cade and Emilee Tellez explain how Veeam has expanded its focus from traditional backup to comprehensive Data Security Posture Management (DSPM). By treating an organization’s data ecosystem like a “social network of data,” Veeam’s Data Command Center provides visibility into data lineage, sovereignty, and access rights across structured and unstructured systems. The speakers use a garage analogy to describe how enterprises tend to accumulate vast amounts of unmanaged data, and they highlight how Veeam helps identify ROT (Redundant, Obsolete, and Trivial) data. This not only reduces storage costs but significantly mitigates risk by shrinking the attack surface, ensuring that “God mode” privileges and exposed S3 buckets are flagged before they can be exploited. The integration between primary data insights and secondary backup data allows Veeam to offer a more sophisticated secure pillar. Emilee Tellez details how the platform now incorporates inline malware detection, YARA rule processing, and file system activity analysis to identify symptoms of encryption or anomalous behavior. This creates a feedback loop with a broad ecosystem of over 60 security partners, including Microsoft Sentinel, Palo Alto Networks, and CrowdStrike. For example, if a storage array from Pure Storage detects an anomaly, it can trigger an API call to Veeam to automatically flag specific backups as infected, preventing them from being used in a restoration and ensuring that security analysts have a correlated view of the threat across the entire infrastructure. A major theme of the discussion is the shift from simple recovery speed to recovery confidence. The presenters argue that in a cyber-incident scenario, recovering too quickly can lead to re-infection; instead, Veeam advocates for a staged, clean recovery process. This is supported by automated readiness checks and isolated “Data Labs” where users can perform dry runs of their disaster recovery (DR) plans. These tests validate everything from RPO/RTO compliance to the specific boot order of complex applications, such as ensuring a SQL database is online before its dependent application servers. By mapping these technical events to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, Veeam provides security teams with actionable intelligence and automated playbooks, transforming backup data from a passive insurance policy into a proactive component of the security operations center (SOC).

Veeam Understand – Know Your Data

In this session, Field CTOs Michael Cade and Emily Tellez dive into the practical application of Veeam’s four-pillar strategy, focusing heavily on the Understand phase. Central to this approach is the recent acquisition of a Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) solution, now integrated as the Data Command Center. This tool acts as a “social network of data,” utilizing a connector framework of over 350 integrations to inventory data systems across platforms like Microsoft 365, Kubernetes, and various cloud environments. By building a comprehensive map of data lineage and access, Veeam helps organizations identify sensitive information, uncover “God mode” privileges, and conduct ROT analysis to eliminate redundant, obsolete, and trivial data, thereby reducing the attack surface and storage costs. Beyond visibility, the presentation highlights how this intelligence informs smarter backup and recovery workflows. The speakers emphasize that understanding data is the prerequisite for securing it, particularly in the face of agentic AI risks where data might be overshared or mismanaged by automated models. Veeam’s orchestration capabilities, which have evolved since 2018, allow for dynamic documentation and automated readiness checks to ensure compliance with Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). This ensures that disaster recovery plans are not just static documents but living, tested processes that can transition workloads, such as moving VMware backups to Hyper-V or Azure, at scale while maintaining a clear audit trail for cyber insurance and regulatory requirements like GDPR. The discussion concludes with a focus on clean recovery, addressing the critical need to prevent the re-infection of environments during restoration. Veeam integrates multiple layers of defense, including inline scanning for anomalies, indicator of compromise (IOC) detection, and the use of YARA rules or antivirus signatures. This process can occur at rest, during backup, or before restoration into isolated sandbox environments for forensic testing. By partnering with an ecosystem of over 60 security providers, such as CrowdStrike, Veeam ensures that if a threat is detected in production, the backup system is immediately informed. This holistic approach transforms backup from a black box into a proactive security asset that validates data integrity and operational resilience in a post-AI world.

Veeam in 2026 with Rick Vanover

In this presentation, Rick Vanover reintroduces Veeam as a global leader that has evolved far beyond its origins in virtual backup. Now clearing over $2 billion in revenue with a workforce of 6,000 employees, the company has secured the top market share spot and expanded its reach into diverse environments ranging from Antarctica to submarines. While still recognized for its foundational backup capabilities, Veeam now stands as the most deployed solution for Microsoft 365 and off-the-shelf Kubernetes backup software, reflecting a strategic shift to meet the modern demands of primary and secondary data management. The core of the presentation focuses on a new strategic framework designed to address the convergence of compliance, security, and data resilience. Vanover outlines a journey through four key pillars: understanding data, securing data, ensuring resilience, and unleashing data potential. This evolution is driven by the necessity of protecting precious data from sophisticated modern threats, moving past traditional “fire and flood” disasters to combat the complexities of ransomware and the risks inherent in the rapid adoption of agentic AI. To manage this landscape, Veeam is integrating Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) with traditional recovery, utilizing the power of AI to provide the necessary scale and oversight. During a candid discussion with delegates, the presenters emphasized that digital transformation has fundamentally changed the stakes for global CIOs, who must now balance innovation velocity with high-level security. The “Veeam of today” is presented not just as a recovery tool, but as a comprehensive resilience partner that provides technical proof points for an AI-driven world. By addressing the risks of oversharing and automated data workflows, Veeam aims to maintain its reputation for reliable backup while expanding its toolkit to ensure that organizational data remains safe, compliant, and ready to be leveraged for future growth.

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