Recovery Is the Pillar Nobody Plans For
Every organization has a backup strategy. Almost none have a recovery strategy. When an attack hits, teams face the hard questions: which files were compromised, when did it actually start, which backup is clean, and how do you prove the restore worked?
Recovery Assist answers all four — automatically:
- Scope identification is immediate — CSF already knows what was affectedected
- Backup selection is intelligent — CSF already knows when the compromise began
- Verification is cryptographic — restored files are proven clean, not assumed cleann
Surgical Precision, Not Scorched Earth
Traditional recovery restores entire volumes or LPARs — hours of downtime, and every unchanged dataset gets overwritten along the way. Recovery Assist restores only what was compromised.
- The attack touched five files? Restore five files
- Everything else keeps running
- Minutes to recovery, not days
How Recovery Assist works
Recovery Assist is a built-in component of CSF Foundation.
Scope Identification
When CSF detects an attack, the forensics browser displays exactly which datasets were affected and the precise timeline of the compromise.
Recovery Assist scopes the restore to only what was actually damaged.
Intelligent Backup Point Selection
Not every backup is safe. Attackers plant backdoors hours or days before the visible attack — your most recent SafeGuarded Copy may already contain malware.
Recovery Assist leverages FIM+'s detection timeline to identify when malware was actually introduced, not just when damage became visible. The difference between restoring clean and reinfecting yourself.
Automated JCL Generation
Recovery Assist generates restore JCL customized with affected file names and the selected backup source. Dataset-level precision — not entire volumes. Your team reviews and submits. No manual JCL coding under pressure.
Post-Recovery Verification
FIM+ adds a final verification step:
- Creates a new cryptographic hash for each restored file
- Compares it against the known-good hash in the CSF vault
- Match confirms trusted state — mismatch triggers further investigation
Auditable, cryptographic proof that recovery was successful.
What Recovery Assist Restores
Software Infrastructure
- APF-authorized libraries, PARMLIB, PROCLIB
- Configuration datasets (VTAMLST, TCPPARMS)
- Started task libraries and TSO authorized tables
Data Layer
- Production datasets encrypted by ransomware
- Datasets modified by unauthorized access
- Files corrupted by malicious activity
Storage Platform Integration
Recovery Assist works with the backup infrastructure already in your environment.
- IBM SafeGuarded Copy — immutable snapshots on DS8000
- Dell SnapVX / ZDP — point-in-time snap sets
- Hitachi Snapshots — storage array snapshots
- IBM DFDSS, HSM, and FDR — conventional backup and restore
DORA's Two-Hour Recovery Mandate
DORA requires critical financial institutions to recover within two hours. Manual processes — scoping damage, locating backups, writing JCL, verifying restores — cannot meet that window.
Recovery Assist compresses the entire sequence:
- Scope identification — immediatecope identification — immediatecope identification — immediatecope identification — immediate
- Backup selection — intelligent
- JCL generation and verification — automated
For organizations subject to DORA, this is the mechanism that makes compliance achievable.
Built Into CSF Foundation
Recovery Assist is not a separate module or add-on. It is a core capability of CSF Foundation, available to every deployment.
Combined with Foundation's real-time reaction engine, FIM+ integrity monitoring, and the forensics browser, Recovery Assist completes the full incident lifecycle:
- Detect, suspend, investigate
- Recover and verify
- All within a single platform
Learn more about CSF Foundation ›