The company has launched a set of advanced features to anticipate threats, enhance compliance, and establish itself as a modern alternative to major hyperscale providers.
Backblaze, an independent cloud storage provider and a leading name in the open cloud movement, announced a significant update to its platform with new security, advanced management, and threat resilience features such as ransomware and data exfiltration protection. Notable innovations include AI-powered anomaly alerts, a new enterprise web console, and role-based access controls (RBAC).
These enhancements reinforce Backblaze’s positioning as a genuine alternative to traditional providers like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure, amid growing demand from organizations for more control, interoperability, and cost efficiency.
AI against suspicious behavior
The new anomaly alert system—currently in private testing—leverages AI to identify unusual activity patterns in B2 Cloud Storage buckets. It’s designed to detect signs of unauthorized access, mass file deletions, or behaviors that could precede data breaches, automatically notifying administrators.
“In a rapidly evolving threat landscape, robust data security is essential,” explained Gleb Budman, CEO of Backblaze. “These capabilities demonstrate our ongoing commitment to protecting our clients’ critical information.”
Enterprise console and zero-trust management
Another key update is the introduction of a new web console tailored for larger-scale environments. Along with RBAC controls, the interface allows organizations to assign granular permissions, manage large user volumes, and align with zero-trust architectures.
This results in more efficient and secure cloud storage management, particularly useful in hybrid and multi-user environments where permission segmentation and activity monitoring are critical.
Forensic visibility and real-time monitoring
Backblaze has made generally available the Bucket Access Logs feature, providing a comprehensive history of operations on objects within each bucket—uploads, downloads, deletions, etc. Fully compatible with the S3 API, this tool enhances privacy monitoring, compliance, and incident response.
It is complemented by Event Notifications, which send real-time alerts for actions like object creation or modification, allowing security teams to react instantly to suspicious events.
More secure and scalable access keys
Aligning with attack surface minimization principles, Backblaze now offers:
Multi-bucket application keys that provide selective access to multiple buckets without exposing the entire account.
Short-lived, scalable keys capable of generating up to 10,000 unique keys per minute—ideal for bulk operations or endpoint-based loads.
Regulatory compliance and integrity control
The new Custom Upload Timestamps feature allows precise setting of a file’s upload date and time. This is crucial for traceability, data integrity, and audit compliance, where preserving the original timestamp without ambiguity is essential.
A modern alternative for open workflows
Operating since 2007 and publicly traded on NASDAQ under the ticker BLZE, Backblaze serves over 500,000 clients across 175 countries. With this update, the company emphasizes its strategy of offering a more open, predictable, and affordable cloud, contrasting with the closed approaches of traditional providers.
Its solutions are used in sectors such as application development, secure backups, disaster recovery, multimedia workflows, and recently, AI workload storage.
via: ir.backblaze