The “last line of defense” isn’t just about having a backup; it’s about knowing your backups are clean and ready to recover. That confidence has never been harder to earn. Ransomware and “low and slow” intrusions can sit undetected long enough to be captured in backups—turning recovery into a high-stakes gamble. And the bad guys know it: Sophos reports that 94% of ransomware attacks attempted to compromise backups.

That’s why we’re introducing Threat Watch, and why it pairs with our existing Threat Hunting capabilities to form Threat Insights: a backup-native approach to threat detection and response that helps close gaps by applying cyber threat intelligence and advanced threat detection to backup data and ensure clean recovery.

What is Threat Watch?

Threat Watch is Druva’s fully automated, cloud-native capability for proactive, continuous threat detection across backup snapshots. It continuously inspects backup data for indicators of compromise (IoCs) so teams can identify risky restore points early, reduce the chance of reinfection, and speed up recovery — all without adding infrastructure or operational overhead.

Think of Threat Watch as threat intelligence for your backups: always-on monitoring that makes your recovery layer smarter and safer.

What Threat Watch delivers (and why it matters)

Threat Watch turns immutable backups into a continuous detection layer by scanning snapshots on an ongoing basis, without forcing you to deploy scanning servers, manage agents, or move data into separate environments.

1) Continuous scanning for advanced threat detection

Threat Watch runs scans on changed snapshots three times daily (every 8 hours) to optimize speed and help surface malicious activity faster. Scans take place outside production environments without infrastructure or agents. This scan-in-place approach avoids the delays of copying data into separate security tools and enables Druva to offer the industry’s only Data Movement Latency SLA. Detection happens in near real time without impacting production performance or increasing infrastructure costs. 

This also supports safer operations during incident response, as scanning in the primary environment can tip off threat actors; running these activities outside production helps teams investigate and respond more discreetly.

2) Retrospective rescans that uncover “sleeper” threats

Threat intelligence evolves quickly, and new indicators of compromise shouldn’t mean yesterday’s backups become a blind spot. Threat Watch automatically rescans the last 30 days when new IoCs are added, helping you surface threats that may have been missed earlier. 

3) Auto-quarantine to protect restore points

When Threat Watch detects a risky snapshot, it can automatically quarantine it so teams don’t accidentally restore from a contaminated point. This helps reduce reinfection risk during recovery.

4) A threat intelligence library you can tailor

Threat Watch uses a curated (and customer-configurable) IoC library, including signals from CISA, Mandiant/Google threat intelligence, and Druva ReconX Labs, plus customer-provided IoCs via upload or API.

5) Workflow-friendly threat detection and response

Designed to reduce operational load with no agents and no dedicated scanning nodes, Druva elastically manages compute and can push detections into existing workflows. Urgent alerting and SIEM/SOAR integrations help teams operationalize backup-derived threat signals as part of broader threat detection and response.

Built on Dru MetaGraph: turning backup data into actionable threat signals

Threat Watch is built on Dru MetaGraph, Druva’s secure, queryable intelligence layer for backup metadata that creates a connected, graph-powered view of your data universe. This includes relationships, permissions, events, and context, all inside the Druva platform. It aggregates and normalizes metadata (with tenant-level isolation and encryption) so teams can analyze meaning and context without complex ETL into external systems.

Because Threat Watch is built on this intelligence layer, it will soon be able to output threat signals into DruAI to help teams prioritize risk, understand impact, and act with greater confidence.

From detection to recovery: Threat Watch → Recovery Intelligence → Accelerated Ransomware Recovery

Detection is only half the battle. During cyber incident response, teams need clarity: What was impacted, what’s safe, and what do we restore first?

That’s why Threat Watch signals feed directly into Druva’s Accelerated Ransomware Recovery suite, powered by Recovery Intelligence. This supports faster, safer recovery by helping teams:

• Identify optimal restore points and reduce recovery uncertainty with clear labeling of impacted snapshots and IoC matches.
• Detect anomalies and get IoC insights (e.g., encryption/modification patterns) to better understand what changed and when.
• Get granular file-level visibility and pre-restore visualizations to support forensics and safer restore decisions.

Net: Threat Watch strengthens both threat detection and the recovery phase of incident response, when speed and certainty matter most. Customers quickly understand blast radius, identify clean restore points, and reduce reinfection risk during recovery.

When you need to go deeper: Threat Hunting (and how it complements Threat Watch)

Threat Watch is your always-on, proactive monitor built for “peacetime” assurance that backups remain safe to restore.

Threat Hunting is what you lean on when you need reactive investigation, containment, and cleanup. It enables cyber threat hunting so teams can search indexed metadata across historical backups to locate IoCs, establish scope/timeline, quarantine infected assets, and use defensible deletion to remove compromised data.

Together, Threat Watch + Threat Hunting become Druva’s Threat Insights: proactive detection plus investigative depth, built into the recovery data you already trust.

Why Threat Insights matters for your teams

For Security: Better cyber threat intelligence for faster incident response

Security teams typically rely on tools focused on the active perimeter, but long-dwell attacks can persist long enough to land in backups, creating a blind spot. Security teams can use Threat Insights to extend detection and investigation into the backup timeline, improving context, scoping, and confidence during cyber incident response:

• Catch “low and slow” threats hiding across backup history and reduce dwell time.
• Prioritize investigations with high-fidelity backup-derived signals and push detections into existing workflows (SIEM/SOAR).
• Use backup data as a historical system of record for timeline, scope, and impact, then support recovery decisions with Recovery Intelligence.

For IT: Cleaner restores and safer recovery under pressure

IT teams are accountable for recovery outcomes and need confidence they won’t restore yesterday’s malware. Threat Insights helps IT teams:

• Maintain clean recovery paths with auto-quarantine (default ON) and ongoing snapshot monitoring.
• Reduce overhead with a zero-infrastructure footprint (no agents or scanning nodes to manage).
• Recover with higher confidence using restore point intelligence, anomaly/IOC insights, and file-level observability from Recovery Intelligence.

Final thoughts

Threat Watch closes a critical gap: it applies advanced threat detection and cyber threat intelligence to the data you’ll rely on when everything else is on fire — your backups. And when paired with Threat Hunting, Threat Insights delivers proactive monitoring plus investigative depth for faster, more confident incident response and recovery.

Ready to see Threat Watch in action?

• Watch the demo
• Read the datasheet for full details
• Tour the product to see our security capabilities in action
• Start your 30-day free trial — no credit card required!