The Role Of Air Gaps In Cyber Resilience
Datacore News, Monday, April 7th, 2025
Air gapping is a cybersecurity strategy that isolates a system or dataset from all unsecured or external networks, including the public internet and internal enterprise LANs.
The objective is simple but powerful: eliminate any potential digital pathway for cyber threats to reach critical systems or data. By removing or severely limiting network connectivity, air gapped environments act as a buffer zone-protecting high-value assets from external compromise, malware propagation, or unauthorized access.
At its core, an air gap (sometimes even referred to as air wall) is a control-layer barrier that can be implemented physically (no network interface at all) or logically (strictly controlled access paths). The key difference between air gapped and non-air gapped systems is connectivity. A non-air gapped backup server might be reachable via APIs or SMB shares. An air gapped one? It doesn't talk to anything-or only talks under very tightly regulated, monitored conditions.