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).

Presented by Michael Cade, Field CTO, and Emilee Tellez, Field CTO. Recorded live at Tech Field Day Extra at RSAC 2026 in San Francisco on March 23, 2026. Watch the entire presentation at https://techfieldday.com/appearance/veeam-presents-at-tech-field-day-extra-at-rsac-2026/ or visit https://techfieldday.com/event/rsac2026/ or https://Veeam.com for more information.