Understanding Veeam Intelligence Functions – Smart Backup, Threat Detection & Automated Recovery

Introduction

Modern businesses need more than just backups—they need intelligent systems that can detect threats, reduce risks, automate protection, and accelerate recovery.
This is why Veeam Intelligence Functions have become a core part of the Veeam platform, especially with Veeam Backup & Replication v12/v13, where AI-powered features help organizations protect their data against ransomware, malware, and human error.

Veeam Intelligence, as the AI-powered assistant within the Veeam product family, is revolutionizing how we work. It’s not only built into Veeam Backup & Replication but also integrated into other Veeam products such as Veeam ONE, delivering intelligent support across the entire data protection ecosystem.

This article will focus on Veeam Intelligence’s applications within Veeam Backup & Replication; in future discussions, we’ll explore its unique value in other products like Veeam ONE.

Core Capabilities: Your 24/7 Expert Team

Veeam Intelligence is not merely a Q&A tool—it’s a full team of experts. Within Veeam Backup & Replication, whether you need an architect, support engineer, security advisor, or development engineer, it can assume the corresponding professional role. In other products like Veeam ONE, it demonstrates different expertise, providing intelligent support for monitoring, reporting, and analytics.

🏗️ Architect Role: Intelligent Advisor for System Design

When facing complex environment planning, Veeam Intelligence analyzes your VM count, business type, and RTO/RPO requirements to deliver comprehensive architectural design proposals. It not only helps predict storage growth and recommend optimal scaling timing but also identifies potential single points of failure and suggests redundancy solutions. Most importantly, it finds the most cost-effective hardware investment plan while meeting your business needs.

🔧 Support Engineer Role: Troubleshooting Powerhouse

When production issues arise, Veeam Intelligence rapidly analyzes error logs to pinpoint root causes. It doesn’t just check related configuration settings and uncover potential linked issues—it also provides clear, step-by-step troubleshooting guides to help you trace symptoms back to their true origins. Even better, it offers preventive measures to avoid recurrence.

🛡️ Security Advisor Role: Professional Guidance for Data Protection

When facing data security threats and compliance requirements, Veeam Intelligence acts like a dedicated security consultant, offering comprehensive protection recommendations. It not only analyzes current environment risks and suggests appropriate Malware Detection configurations but also provides defense strategies based on the latest threat intelligence. Notably, it delivers targeted security configuration guidance aligned with Veeam’s latest security feature updates from v12 to v13, ensuring your data protection framework consistently meets the latest security standards and compliance mandates.

💻 Development Engineer Role: Coding Partner for Automation

When you need to develop automation scripts or system integrations, Veeam Intelligence automatically generates PowerShell and Python script templates, provides REST API call examples, and delivers complete technical integration plans. This dramatically lowers the barrier to automation development, enabling tasks that once took weeks to be completed in just days.

Latest Highlight: Powered by enhanced foundational models and visible reasoning processes, each role can now see the AI’s professional analytical logic—ensuring accuracy and actionable recommendations.

New Features of Veeam Intelligence in Veeam Backup & Replication

Thanks to recent updates, Veeam Intelligence’s capabilities within Veeam Backup & Replication have taken a quantum leap. While similar features exist in other products like Veeam ONE, this article focuses specifically on VBR scenarios:

🎯 Fully Natural Language Conversations with Voice Input/Output Support

Imagine solving problems as easily as chatting with a colleague: “My backup job failed last night—error code 2934 affected my finance database backup. What should I do?” Veeam Intelligence fully understands your problem description and delivers precise solutions.

Even better, it supports voice input and output. Picture yourself sipping coffee in the morning, saying to your computer: “Give me a report on last night’s backups,” and the AI assistant instantly delivers a detailed summary. This natural interaction makes daily operations smoother and more enjoyable.

🎯 Thinking Mode Support

Veeam Intelligence follows mainstream AI trends by introducing Visible Thinking Process functionality—a now-standard feature in conversational AI. Veeam brings this convenience to the data protection field.

In Thinking Mode, the AI assistant reveals its full analytical process: from understanding the core problem, to querying relevant knowledge bases, to reasoning toward a conclusion. This transparent workflow lets you not only know “what” but also “why.”

This design helps users better understand the AI’s decision logic and enables them to ask follow-up questions about the reasoning process, creating truly meaningful human-AI dialogue experiences.

🎯 Basic and Advanced Modes

Veeam Intelligence offers two distinct working modes, striking a balance between usability and data privacy:

Basic Mode: Operates entirely on Veeam’s public knowledge base without sending your specific environment data to any external services. While it cannot access real-time data from your current VBR server, it’s sufficient for learning Veeam concepts, understanding best practices, or consulting configuration methods.

Advanced Mode: More powerful, this mode directly queries your VBR server information. It transmits relevant data from your backup server to Veeam’s AI model in the cloud, analyzes the data on your backup server, and provides tailored recommendations.

Veeam Backup Security Deep Dive – How VBR Protects Against Malware and Ransomware

Introduction

Cyber threats like ransomware and malware are now targeting backup repositories, making backup security more critical than ever.
In this article, we take a deep dive into Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR) security features, exploring how Veeam protects your data with immutability, anomaly detection, and layered defense mechanisms.

In addition to online scanning of backup data streams, VBR now also supports secondary scanning of backed-up data. Version 12.1 features two major scanning engines: one uses antivirus software on the Mount Server, and the other uses YARA.

YARA Scanning Engine Tool

YARA (full name: Yet Another Recursive Acronym).

Official website link: https://yara.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.

GitHub repository link: https://github.com/virustotal/yara/.

YARA is typically used to help security experts and researchers identify and classify malware. It is primarily used for malware research and detection. It can scan for text or binary code patterns.

The YARA tool generally consists of two parts. One part is the YARA scanning engine itself, which can be installed on various platforms. The other part is YARA rules, which are matching rules written by users based on actual needs. When using YARA, the simple logic is that the YARA engine calls YARA rules to scan the corresponding content that needs to be scanned and outputs the scan results.

In VDP v12.1, the YARA tool was added. Backup and security administrators can directly call pre-written YARA rules from the VBR console to scan backup archives. There is no need to manually set up a YARA runtime environment yourself.

YARA Rules

Regarding YARA rules, the syntax is actually very simple. You can refer to the official documentation at https://yara.readthedocs.io/en/stable/writingrules.html. Related rule templates can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/Yara-Rules/rules.

VBR comes with three classic YARA rule templates built in, which can serve as references for writing.

Of course, it's not so troublesome now. Various GPTs can help us easily write a YARA rule, for example:

How YARA Scanning Works

Save the content generated by Chat GPT above into a file ending with .yar or .yara, then place it in the C:\Program Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Backup\YaraRules directory. VBR will automatically recognize these rules.

After starting the scan, VBR will mount the backup archive to the Mount Server, then use the YARA engine on the Mount Server to load the selected YARA rules for scanning.

Of course, since this scanning is for text and binary patterns, it is not limited to malicious code scanning. In fact, it can scan for any key information we want to find.

Mount Server Antivirus Software Scanning

Starting with VBR v10, antivirus software scanning was built into the Secure Restore feature. VBR calls the antivirus software on the Mount Server to scan backup archives. In v12.1, this feature has been integrated into Scan Backup, and the built-in supported antivirus software has been further expanded.

Antivirus Software Configuration

In v12.1, six antivirus engines are built-in: Symantec Protection Engine, ESET, Windows Defender, Kaspersky Security, Bitdefender Endpoint Security Tools, and Trellix (formerly the well-known McAfee).

Besides these six software options, if other antivirus software needs to be used, Veeam also supports configuring other antivirus software via the AntivirusInfos.xml file. Simply modify the XML file in the %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Veeam\Backup and Replication\Mount Service directory on the Mount Server and use CLI commands to call the corresponding antivirus software. For more detailed XML configuration methods, refer to the official website's detailed XML syntax attribute description: https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/av_scan_xml.html?ver=120.

Configuration Methods

On VBR, there are multiple ways to initiate a scan.

1. Select a supported backup archive, right-click, or choose the Scan Backup button on the toolbar to activate the antivirus engine scan or YARA scan dialog.

After starting Scan Backup, a scan dialog will open. At this point, these two engines can be used to perform security scans on the entire backup chain using three different scanning methods.

2. In various whole-machine or disk recovery Secure Restore steps, check the antivirus engine scan or YARA scan option.

3. In SureBackup jobs, check the antivirus engine scan or YARA scan option.

Viewing Scan Results

If the scan results match the content being searched for, VBR will mark the scanned backup archive as Infected status, indicating that malware has been detected.

Complete scan archives are recorded in this directory on VBR: C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup\FLRSessions\Windows\FLR__<machinename>_\Antivirus

As with the online malware attack analysis mentioned earlier, detailed scan statuses are also recorded in VBR's History. Scan results can be looked up in History.

The above are some of the new backup archive scanning and inspection methods added in VDP v12.1. They help administrators avoid secondary infections after issues occur and ensure that the restored data is a clean system archive.

Key Veeam Security Features for Malware Defense

🔒 Immutable Backups

Veeam’s immutable backup repositories prevent any modification or deletion of backup data, even by administrators.

• Available for Linux hardened repositories and S3 object storage.

• Ensures ransomware resilience with write-once, read-many (WORM) protection.

📖 Reference: Veeam Immutability Guide

🧠 Malware and Anomaly Detection

Newer Veeam releases include malware scanning integration and anomaly detection capabilities:

• Automatically scans backups for malicious patterns.

• Detects unusual changes in file size or data entropy.

• Integrates with third-party antivirus tools for added security.

👥 Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Minimize insider threats with granular permissions:

• Assign user roles like Backup Operator, Restore Operator, or Auditor.

• Restrict critical actions (e.g., deletion, encryption changes).

• Log every activity for audit traceability.

🧩 Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Add an extra layer of protection by enabling MFA in Veeam Enterprise Manager or console access.
It prevents unauthorized login even if credentials are compromised.

👉 Related reading: Making VBR Login More Secure – Complete Guide

Conclusion

The VBR security features in Veeam Backup & Replication provide an advanced defense framework against malware and ransomware.
From immutable backups to anomaly detection and RBAC, Veeam empowers businesses to secure their data and guarantee safe, reliable recovery when disaster strikes.

Protecting your backups isn’t optional—it’s a core part of modern cybersecurity.