A recent WEI study says that 64% of IT leaders cite improved data security for their organization as their top objective over the next 12 months. And for good reason. As technology continues to evolve, it’s not a matter of if an enterprise will have a ransomware attack but when it will happen. With technological advances, it’s not just enterprises that benefit — cyber criminals do as well.
There used to be a single test to determine the effectiveness of your data backup strategy. It centered around successfully restoring your data from a backup, and you would rest easy knowing that you would, in theory, recover from a data loss event. It was really that simple. Still, there were some security concerns as you did not want just anyone accessing the backups who might accidently (or inadvertently) delete them. There was also the threat of confiscating a backup tape containing sensitive or valuable data by an imposter. For the most part, the data backup system was out of sight and out of mind for everyone other than the backup administrator.
How much data is your enterprise creating and what are you doing about it? For most companies, data is being created, and subsequently stored, at faster and faster rates. However, many enterprises lack the tools to properly utilize and take advantage of their data, especially those that are still struggling with just the data storage part of the equation.
One of the greatest challenges faced by today’s enterprises is managing their ever-increasing volumes of data. Over time, the volume, location and importance of data have all evolved, and legacy solutions can no longer keep up.
When it comes to challenges faced by today’s IT organizations, there are few as universal as data management. In the last two decades, the volume of data that enterprises are expected to utilize, secure, and manage has increased exponentially. The location of that data has also changed, with much of it moving to the cloud or hybrid environments.
IT security is an increasingly complex mission, especially after the turmoil of 2020. If your organization is like most, your workforce is likely still dispersed, your employees are utilizing their own devices to access the network, and your data is living in a growing number of locations, including the edge, private cloud, public cloud, and on-premises.
Keeping up with the latest advances in IT technology is a task in and of itself. Once you add implementation and administering each new solution, it can become overwhelming. However, despite the hassle of upgrading, it’s a necessary to ensure that each part of your IT infrastructure is performing as optimally as possible.
When it comes to pieces of the IT puzzle where skimping or going with the option that’s just ‘good enough’ will inevitably come back to haunt you, backup and disaster recovery tops the list.
The recent COVID-19 crisis is a prime example of why contingency plans are so critical in a world that seems increasingly vulnerable to disrupting events. It also shows just how little time you may have to implement a plan. In a world today that operates at the speed of digital on a normal day, even the best laid plans are hard to implement when everything is trending all at once. As Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Correlation may not equal causation, but the link IDC research draws between digital transformation and business success is a strong one. The digital transformation needed to support today’s dynamic business models include a host of new technologies: solid state storage, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), software-defined infrastructure, and cloud, among others.
