Today, a Git repository contains not only source code, but also infrastructure-as-code, pipelines, runbooks, prompts, and agent definitions. According to Hycu, which is now making backup for Azure DevOps generally available, the AI agent is pushing the boundaries of version control for the third time in twenty years, and a daily backup is no longer sufficient.
Four years ago, the most requested backup at Hycu was Office 365. Today, according to Andy Fernandez, GM of the AI and cyber program, three other workloads top every RFP: Git repositories, Salesforce, and identities such as Okta and Entra ID.
It is no coincidence that the repo is among them. Architect Amarnath Ramaprathapan sees how version control has passed through three eras, each time trading control for speed.
Three eras, three boundaries
In the on-prem era, Git resided on its own hardware behind a physical perimeter. Anyone who got past the firewall was in. In the cloud era, with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, that perimeter dissolved and the most valuable code moved to infrastructure accessible from anywhere.
The era of AI agents pushes the boundary again to the agent itself: a non-human identity that reads the entire codebase and operates at machine speed.
That is where the trap lies, according to Ramaprathapan. “For twenty years, our defenses answered the questions ‘who are you?’ and ‘are you allowed to do this?’. When a cleanup agent deletes a live branch, a refactor agent force-pushes over main after a failed rebase, or a compromised token deletes releases, the answer to both questions is yes.”
“The damage looks legitimate. It is authenticated. It is authorized. GitHub cannot stop it, because for GitHub, nothing is wrong.” The questions that actually protect you are different: was this normal, was this correct, and can I undo it?
The platform itself cannot answer those. For that, you need behavioral detection and an immutable copy outside the system being attacked. A backup, in other words.
Output increases, oversight does not
What increases the urgency is the volume. “Tools like Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Code keep committing through the night. No one is watching,” says Fernandez. He sees organizations deploying as much production code in a single workday as they used to in a quarter.
Tools like Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Code keep committing through the night. No one is watching
Andy Fernandez, GM of the AI and cyber program at Hycu
At the same time, what is in that repo is changing: alongside application code, there is also infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, deployment configurations, runbooks, SDKs, AI prompts, and agent definitions. “Losing a repo can mean losing the specification of how your company works.”
Hycu cataloged more than thirty ways in which repository data disappears, becomes corrupted, or is overwritten without the platform restoring it.
Azure DevOps on board
The news that Hycu links to that story is the general availability of backup for Azure DevOps, which according to Ramaprathapan is the fastest-growing version control system at the moment. Hycu protects all five services:
- Boards: work itemswith fields, relationships, attachments and revision history, queries, backlogs, dashboards - Repos: full Git mirrors with all branches and optional LFS, pull requests, wikis
- Pipelines: YAML and classic definitions, build history, variable groups, agent queues
- Test Plans
- Artifacts: feeds and packages in six formats, from NuGet to Cargo
On top of that comes the organizational level: process templates, ACLs, users and groups, service connections, agent pools, extensions, and the audit log. With GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, Hycu now calls itself Git complete, and through Jira, Jira Product Discovery, and CircleCI, it aims to cover the entire software development lifecycle.
European requirements
More important than yet another integration is the cadence Hycu prescribes: an RPO of thirty minutes for critical repositories, hourly as a minimum, an on-demand backup before major agent operations, and a recovery test every quarter.
A daily backup, says Fernandez, means today that you lose a day of AI-generated work. Europe is pushing in the same direction. DORA obliges financial institutions to have an independent, off-site copy for the seven to eight applications their entire chain runs on and to prove to the regulator that recovery works. NIS2 extends that logic more broadly. “An independent, immutable, testable copy is no longer a preference. In Europe, it is regulation.”
Human speeds
Hycu’s analysis makes sense, and the shift from code to business specification is well underway. Those who keep their prompts, pipelines, and agent definitions in Git have their operational memory stored there.
On the other hand, GitHub and Azure DevOps are not defenseless in themselves. Branch protection, mandatory reviews, audit logs, and a recycle bin for deleted repos already exist, and some of Hycu’s thirty scenarios can be prevented with properly configured permissions.
An independent, immutable, testable copy is no longer a preference. In Europe, it is regulation.
Andy Fernandez, GM of the AI and cyber program at Hycu
Thirty minutes is a big leap compared to daily, but compared to an agent that overwrites a history in seconds, it remains a window in which much can go wrong. Hycu itself admits that SaaS platforms do not yet offer the APIs for continuous protection.
The immutable copy outside the platform is currently the only thing that works, and with GitHub outages already causing downtime themselves this year, that argument is not even reserved for agents.