Oxibox coupled backup software and secondary storage

Oxibox joined The IT Press Tour last week in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The company is positioning itself as a specialist in a fast-emerging cybersecurity niche: backup security. Founded in 2014, the French startup argues that traditional backup systems - long viewed as the last line of defense—have become one of the weakest links in modern cyber resilience. As ransomware groups increasingly target backup repositories first, Oxibox contends that "backup is no longer enough" unless it is designed from the ground up to resist attack.

At the core of Oxibox's pitch is a simple but radical idea: backups must be secure by default, not retrofitted with protections after deployment. The company’s platform relies on at-source encryption and software-defined air-gapping, ensuring that backups remain inaccessible even if attackers compromise production systems or administrative credentials. Unlike immutable S3 storage or tape libraries, which Oxibox describes as costly, complex, and prone to backplane exposure, its approach disconnects backups logically rather than physically, reducing operational overhead while improving security.

The company highlights a growing pattern in ransomware incidents: attackers delete or encrypt backups to force ransom payments, or quietly exfiltrate sensitive data from backup servers for later extortion. In this context, Oxibox positions its technology as "lifesaving", citing customer incidents where all conventional backups were compromised while Oxibox-protected copies remained intact, enabling full system recovery in under two hours. France’s state-owned cybersecurity arm Docaposte has selected Oxibox as an exclusive secure-backup partner, reinforcing its credibility in regulated and public-sector environments.

Technically, Oxibox differentiates itself through a ransomware-proof file system with integrated behavioral analysis. The platform monitors file-system activity in real time, filtering suspicious read, write, and seek operations with sub-millisecond latency and throughput exceeding 40 Gbps. Its Universal Data Protection (UDP) layer is compatible with most backup software, supports POSIX and S3 access, and uses AI-enhanced detection to prevent silent data corruption throughout the backup lifecycle. A complementary "plug-and-protect" offering integrates backup storage, agents, deduplication, and end-to-end encryption into a turnkey solution aimed squarely at the mid-market.

That mid-market focus is deliberate. Oxibox argues that organizations with fewer than 1,500 employees are both under-protected by major vendors and prime targets for attackers. Deployment is designed to take less than 30 minutes, even for small IT teams, and pricing is volume-based with unlimited licenses, avoiding per-workload penalties. The solution supports heterogeneous environments, from NAS and hypervisors to Microsoft 365 and cloud services, enabling consistent protection across distributed infrastructures.

Oxibox remains 100% bootstrapped but has steadily expanded its footprint. By early 2025, the platform was deployed across more than 4,000 public entities and 6,000 end customers, protecting over 5.5 petabytes of data daily. Strategic partnerships with Airbus Cyber, Docaposte, and pan-European distributor EET underpin its international ambitions. Looking ahead, the company plans to evolve from a secure-backup specialist into a broader cyber-resilience platform, with higher-speed recovery, expanded virtualization support, and production-grade protection as key roadmap milestones.

In a market crowded with legacy backup vendors pivoting toward security, Oxibox is betting that starting with security - not adding it later - will define the next generation of data protection.