Rubrik has introduced Apache Iceberg Protection, a data protection solution designed to recover complete, queryable tables on Amazon Web Services following cyberattacks, accidental deletion, or data corruption. The company announced the new capability for Apache Iceberg tables in AWS Glue Data Catalog and Amazon S3 Tables, with general availability expected later this month. The offering addresses a critical gap in lakehouse recovery by preserving both data and the metadata structure needed to make tables immediately queryable after restoration.
The solution delivers several technical capabilities that distinguish it from native recovery tools. Rubrik backs up an Iceberg table's data alongside its full metadata, then re-registers the table in the catalog during recovery so it can be queried using engines including Amazon Athena, Apache Spark, and Trino. The platform performs forever-incremental backups of the latest compacted snapshots, and customers can select the Amazon S3 storage class for their backups. Organizations can store immutable Apache Iceberg backups either within their own AWS accounts or within Rubrik Cloud Vault. The system also supports isolated recovery, allowing teams to take on-demand backups before risky operations such as schema changes or large batch writes, then restore to a separate Iceberg branch for validation before promoting the table to production.
According to Rubrik, native Iceberg snapshots function as metadata pointers rather than independent backups, meaning those pointers can be lost alongside the data when a table is deleted, corrupted by ransomware, or overwritten. While native tools can restore underlying files, the company said they don't rewire the catalog, forcing data teams to manually reconstruct table metadata before the data becomes usable again. Rubrik claims it's the only Iceberg-aware data protection product that lets customers store immutable Apache Iceberg backups within their own AWS accounts. "Data lakes have grown beyond analytics and AI to now run the entire business," said Anneka Gupta, chief product officer at Rubrik, adding that the company now protects "the lakehouse itself" with "complete, queryable tables, not just raw files."
The announcement reflects the expanding role of Apache Iceberg as a foundation for business-critical operations beyond traditional analytics and AI workloads. By unifying lakehouse protection with coverage for surrounding databases, pipelines, and code on a single platform, Rubrik positions the solution as part of a broader data resilience strategy. The company noted it has long protected the underlying object storage layer, but this new capability extends that protection to the lakehouse architecture itself, ensuring organizations can recover operational systems rather than just raw files. Apache Iceberg Protection is scheduled for general availability later this month, and earlier this year Rubrik launched AI solutions and partner integrations focused on AI governance and cyber recovery. The growing dependency on lakehouse platforms for core business functions makes metadata-aware backup a prerequisite for operational continuity, not merely a safeguard for analytics projects. Organizations adopting Iceberg as infrastructure rather than tooling will need to weigh the trade-offs between native snapshot mechanisms and third-party solutions that promise end-to-end recoverability without manual intervention.