Even the good old floppy disk had a built-in slider that turned the rewritable medium into a read-only medium. A light sensor checked whether the corresponding window was open and set the floppy disk to “read only” if it was activated. WORM technology goes one step further in the direction of “Immutable Backups”.

The term stands for Write Once Read Multiple and thus describes the main difference to the floppy: Although existing data cannot be changed or deleted, data can still be stored on the medium.

With our products, it has always been the removable media – for example RDX removable disks from Overland-Tandberg and LTO tapes from Fujifilm – that have been able to realize such protection via hardware WORM. This makes overwriting simply impossible and a WORM archive can be quickly built up that even withstands GDPR guidelines.

RDX removable hard drives

Overland/Tandberg even provides its own Windows software for this purpose: RDX-Lock, for example, offers both audit-proof archiving and protection of the backup data against malware. In addition to the management of read/write accesses, this also enables the complete recovery of data after an infection.

In addition, the integrated RansomBlock function for an RDX WORM medium activates write operations for previously selectable applications and processes – similar to a firewall. Thus, backup applications can also use the RDX WORM media as a regular backup target.

LTO WORM tapes

Similarly, LTO WORM cartridges also protect against cyber-attacks – and have done so for several LTO generations. For this purpose, they are already described with a unique format by factory. An LTO drive, however, which already has the technology integrated into its firmware, automatically recognizes WORM media that have been inserted. So also here the cooperation with backup software is possible without any problems. We would like to highlight our FreeNAS systems with built-in LTO drive. Via backup software Archiware P5 can be used to conveniently store backups on WORM tapes.

Our storage products also come with WORM options out of the box, or our technicians can integrate them successfully.

Ceph Object Storage with WORM over S3

The distributed storage solution Ceph also supports WORM functionalities. For example, if you use an S3 gateway with Ceph, you can securely offload data to the cloud. (A CIFS/SMB option is already being planned).

Our Veeam Immutable Backup Integration, which we can build for you for the Ceph systems Ambedded Mars 400 and PetaSAN, is basically based on WORM over S3. The powerful program package Veeam Backup & Replication also masters the handling of such LTO media.

TrueNAS as WORM File Storage

TrueNAS 12.X (formerly FreeNAS) supports WORM not only in combination with the mentioned LTO drives, but also already for disks with SMB/CIFS shares. In doing so, it simply declares the data written to a target as read-only. This effective software WORM thus controls the writeability of files and folders depending on their modification time and an adjustable grace period.

Infortrend in WORM trend

Infortrend can shine with WORM functionalities in two product families. In both the EonStor GS family and the CS series, secure write-once protection can be enabled for file-based volumes. As soon as the system writes to such volumes, it immediately declares the data as “write-protected”. They cannot be changed, deleted or overwritten afterwards. Security also dictates that once protection has been applied to a disk pool, it cannot be deactivated again.