Google announced three enhancements to its Google Cloud Backup and Disaster recovery service to enhance customers' ability to manage backups simply and securely while boosting agility and reducing the workload on IT teams.

Backup and disaster recovery technologies are key components of ransomware defense. The first enhancement allows users to create backup vault storage systems that cannot be modified or accidentally deleted. Backup vault data is stored in Google-managed projects and "logically air-gapped" from Google Cloud projects, the company said in a blog post. Compute Engine VMs, VMware Engine VMs, Oracle databases, and SQL Server databases are supported.

Backup vault storage isn't visible to users inside the organization, preventing direct attacks, and Google manages access through its Google Cloud Backup and DR service APIs and UI. Users can set vault backup rules on modification and deletion when creating vaults. The backups are fully self-contained, giving users the opportunity for recovery when a source resource is no longer available, helping teams keep production applications online.

Google is also making updates to its centralized backup management system. Its new fully managed service is an integrated, developer-centric, self-service model that allows app developers to back up their VMs while the teams managing storage and backup systems retain governance and oversight. Monitoring and reporting capabilities include: scheduled backup jobs and restore jobs, customizable reporting, and alerts and notifications.

The system, integrated with Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM), allows developers to create backups during the creation of Compute Engine VMs, allowing users to have correct data protection policies deployed from the outset of project creation.