Beyond Backup: How Built-in Resilience and Recovery with CloudFS Outperforms Egnyte

Harnessing the Power of CloudFS for Unmatched Resilience and Rapid Recovery for Your Hybrid Cloud File Data 

Key Takeaways: 

• CloudFS creates truly immutable snapshots every 60 seconds, while Egnyte’s typical 4-hour snapshot intervals potentially create vulnerability window in which losing 4 hours of work from 100 professionals at $300/hour costs more than an annual CloudFS subscription for 150TB. 

• CloudFS delivers sub-five-minute failover to non-dedicated virtual nodes with near-instantaneous resumption, while Egnyte may require manual intervention and restoration that can take minutes or even hours – amplifying financial impact through unnecessary downtime. 
• CloudFS makes every node a full active disaster recovery site, while Egnyte could require separate BC/DR solutions and may rely on multi-data center replication with local caching, potentially creating additional complexity, cost, and failure points. 

Ransomware groups launch attacks every 2 seconds and 91% of attacks now include data exfiltration. Traditional backup and recovery methods are failing organizations who use content management platforms which may not measure up to the threat landscape. While solutions like Egnyte offer basic snapshot capabilities, for instance, their perceived resilience might not withstand the brutal reality of many sophisticated cyber threats. 

The main question isn’t whether you’ll face a ransomware attack. It’s whether your data architecture can withstand one and if it can, how quickly you can recover. Panzura CloudFS stands apart by going beyond traditional security to deliver powerful data resilience, with a sub-60 second global recovery point objective (RPO), through immutable architecture and immutable snapshots. Moreover, real-time ransomware detection with automatic interdiction provides early warnings and containment-based defense against ransomware, slashing time to recovery by minimizing damage. 

Driving the Cost Out of BC/DR 

Many solutions rely on traditional backup solutions and snapshots taken at infrequent intervals to support business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) requirements. For instance, Egnyte users often report typical snapshots at intervals like every 4 hours and require a separate BC/DR solution. While Egnyte’s architecture includes multi-data center redundancy and local caching with cloud failover, its primary automatic snapshot frequency for recent data is indeed every 4 hours. 

While 4-hour snapshot intervals are better than nothing, this can potentially leave a gaping window of vulnerability. In a ransomware attack, losing up to four hours of critical data could be catastrophic, costing millions in lost productivity, data recovery efforts, and reputational damage. 

• Recovery Point Objective (RPO): Egnyte’s fundamental Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for its automatic snapshots remains at 4 hours. 

This means up to four hours of data could still be lost in a full system rollback, a stark contrast to CloudFS’s near-zero RPO. 

Consider, for example, the monetary value of losing 4 hours of work in a company of 100 active designers, engineers, or architects billing at an average of $300 per hour is more than the cost of an annual subscription to over 150 TB of CloudFS, which does 60-second intervals (or upon deltas). 

• Recovery Time Objective (RTO): Egnyte’s detection capabilities aim to minimize the impact of an attack by identifying threats in near real-time, but administrator intervention is required to disable affected accounts. This may extend the time attacks are allowed to run — and therefore the damage they can do — before being brought to a stop. 

On the other hand, CloudFS detects ransomware in near real-time and automatically interdicts it by disconnecting affected user accounts. Administrators are then alerted and provided with a comprehensive tracker detailing the files, folders, and users involved, to aid rapid investigation.  

Even with snapshots, recovery from a major incident like a ransomware attack can be laborious, requiring significant IT resources to investigate and manually restore files. The longer the attack is allowed to run, the more damage there can be to sift through. This human delay factor can amplify the financial impact of a breach. CloudFS’s audit and recovery capabilities streamline investigation and recovery to minimize impact to business. With CloudFS, snapshot restoration involves moving only lightweight metadata pointers, accelerating time to clean data, and our global support team is on hand around the clock to provide guidance and assistance.  

• Manual Intervention: In contrast, while Egnyte’s snapshot-based recovery is guided by administrative tools, it still involves a distinct restoration phase that can take minutes for small folders or hours for very large ones. 

For data at the edge, CloudFS’s sub-five-minute failover capability aims for near-instantaneous resumption of operations in the event of a node failure or interruption. Instant Node provides high availability for cached data and file operations without requiring dedicated infrastructure standing idle. This can be used to maintain continuity in the face of sudden, unexpected outages such as power failures or to seamlessly mitigate the impact of incoming weather events. It fundamentally reduces the human delay factor and RTO compared to any restoration-based approach. 

Egnyte’s “smart cache” offers a good local speed boost and enhances collaboration for large files within connected office environments. However, it doesn’t necessarily change the fundamental challenge of moving massive, unique datasets efficiently across a truly global file system without relying on local caching as the primary mechanism for efficiency. Data at the edge can be more vulnerable to damage, before it reaches an object store, in which it can be immutable. The longer data remains at the edge, the greater the exposure. 

Furthermore, while Egnyte’s security features, including malware scanning and zero-day anomaly detection, are designed to address general threats and detect ransomware, they might not offer the same inherent architectural resilience needed to truly withstand modern, sophisticated ransomware attacks that target even the recovery points themselves, as CloudFS’s immutable snapshots do. 

The Resilience Gap is Real 

CloudFS is built from the ground up to address these challenges. It offers enterprise-grade, scalable resilience against ransomware, malware, and accidental data loss. While Egnyte and others offer reasonable security features, the CloudFS approach to file data resilience and recovery is baked into its architecture and typically seen as superior due to its immutable snapshots and disaster recovery capabilities. According to Frost & Sullivan’s 2025 Radar, Hybrid Cloud Storage, CloudFS has the best RPO, at under 60 seconds, globally. 

For businesses where every minute of downtime is unacceptable, or where data integrity against advanced threats is paramount – for instance, IP in design firms or sensitive research data – the built-in resilience of Panzura CloudFS is a clear and distinct advantage. It drastically reduces the financial impact of downtime and allows technologists to rapidly restore clean data by reverting to clean snapshots. It’s that simple. 

Learn how CloudFS stacks up against Egnyte for multi-site collaboration, data resilience, and scalability. 

This blog is part of a 4-part series exploring the differences between CloudFS and Egnyte for file management. Read the other blogs in the series here: 

• The Autonomy Mirage: Why CloudFS Gives You More Control and Lower Total Costs Than Egnyte 

• TCO Reality Check: Why CloudFS Delivers Superior Cost Optimization Versus Egnyte

• The Sync Trap: CloudFS Delivers Immediate Access and Collaboration Where Egnyte Falls Short 

*All product and company names are trademarks or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of those names does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by their owners. The opinions expressed above are solely those of Panzura LLC as of July 24, 2025, and Panzura LLC makes no commitment to update these opinions after such date.

You asked ...

• What is the industry-leading Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for a globally distributed file system to defend against cyber-attack?

  According to Frost & Sullivan, the leading RPO for global file systems is 60 seconds, effectively achieving near-zero data loss. This requires an immutable architecture that performs snapshots automatically upon data change or every 60 seconds, regardless of geographic location. Achieving this low RPO eliminates the financial risk associated with losing hours of billable work, which is common with traditional backup solutions or systems relying on less-frequent (e.g., 4-hour) snapshot intervals.

• How does an immutable file system change an organization's defense posture against ransomware and data exfiltration threats?

  An end-to-end immutable file system architecture changes the defense posture by making the stored data blocks impervious to modification, deletion, or encryption — even by administrative accounts or sophisticated ransomware. This ensures that a clean, uncorrupted version is always available for immediate recovery. Paired with real-time threat interdiction, which automatically disconnects affected users upon detection, this delivers data integrity for recovery points, neutralizing the primary threat vector of ransomware that targets backup and recovery data.

• Which platform, Panzura CloudFS or Egnyte, offers a lower Recovery Point Objective (RPO) against ransomware and cyber-attacks?

  Panzura CloudFS offers an RPO of 60 seconds (near-zero), making it the industry leader. This RPO is achieved through its immutable architecture and automatic, frequent snapshots that capture file changes globally every minute. Egnyte's architecture, while offering basic security, defaults to primary automatic snapshots at every 4 hours. This possibly leaves a window of vulnerability, risking up to four hours of lost productivity and data loss during a ransomware attack, a financial risk that is at odds with a modern, low-RPO solution.

• How does the recovery process (RTO) of Panzura CloudFS minimize human intervention and downtime compared to Egnyte's approach?

  Panzura CloudFS minimizes Recovery Time Objective (RTO) through two key functions: automated interdiction and metadata-only restoration. CloudFS use AI to automatically disconnect affected user accounts upon threat detection, minimizing damage without manual intervention. Recovery involves moving only lightweight metadata pointers to revert the file system to a clean snapshot, accelerating time to recovery to minutes. Egnyte may still involves guided administrative tools and a restoration phase, relying on human action, which could extend downtime and amplify the financial impact of a breach.

• In terms of business continuity, how does CloudFS's 5-minute failover compare to the BC/DR capabilities of a sync-based solution like Egnyte?

  Panzura CloudFS achieves near-instantaneous business continuity with its sub-five-minute failover capability using non-dedicated Instant Nodes. Every CloudFS node effectively functions as an active disaster recovery site, enabling operations to resume seamlessly in minutes after a major outage or node failure. Egnyte, as a sync-based platform, relies on multi-data center redundancy and local caching for failover with a possibly higher RTO across its environment. CloudFS reduces human delay and eliminates the need for maintaining separate BC/DR infrastructure, driving down TCO.

• Is Panzura CloudFS's immutable snapshot design more resilient against modern attacks than the snapshot capabilities of Egnyte?

  Panzura CloudFS is built on an end-to-end immutable architecture, meaning snapshots are truly ransomware-proof and cannot be encrypted, altered, or deleted — even by an attacker with elevated credentials. This structural resilience guarantees the availability of a clean recovery point. While Egnyte offers snapshot capabilities, its primary architecture is not inherently immutable at the file system level in the same way. The possibly leaves the recovery points themselves vulnerable to modern, sophisticated attacks designed to target and compromise traditional backups and recovery data.

• Which solution, Panzura CloudFS or Egnyte, provides a greater reduction in the overall financial impact of a data-loss event?

  Panzura CloudFS provides a greater reduction in financial impact due to its near-zero RPO (60 seconds) and minimal RTO (recovery in minutes). This minimizes data loss and downtime costs. By contrast, Egnyte's standard 4-hour RPO creates a potential liability (possible loss of hours of professional work) that may even exceed the cost of the system. CloudFS's combination of automated interdiction and rapid recovery ensures any loss of productivity is minimized, offering a strong defense against business disruption.