• Mark Adams, Regional Sales Director, Northern Europe at Cohesity


• 16.02.2022 11:00 am
#data #managment

Regulation and ransomware are a financial services organisation’s worst nightmare, but should they be? It’s 2022 and IT teams are still struggling to meet basic SLAs for data availability and access, let alone ensure regulatory compliance, optimise storage costs, prevent disruption from ransomware and other cyberattacks, or mine the data for useful insights. That makes it much more than an IT issue – it’s a serious inhibitor to digital business success. So what happened?

Surely every organisation knows the importance of data protection, right? Wrong. Unfortunately, the evidence would suggest not. One in three financial services organisations surveyed in a 2021 report by IT security specialists had been hit by ransomware, 25 percent of those paid to get their data back, but even then they didn’t recover anywhere near all of it. The daily task of protecting, storing, identifying and provisioning an organisation’s data – arguably its most valuable business asset – remains, for many, a ridiculously complex, inefficient and expensive chore.

The UK police recently lost more than 150,000 fingerprint, DNA and arrest history records after accidentally wiping them from national policing systems. As experts have stated, it’s hard to believe that there is no protection, no backup and no policies that would prevent this kind of incident taking place. Yet research suggests this is not a single case – as many as 57% of organisations are not very confident in their ability to recover from a major data-loss event. That’s an oversight that needs to be corrected.

To some degree, legacy vendors in the data protection sector are to blame. There has been almost no fundamental innovation from them in 25 years. From the outset their approach has been to produce specialist tools optimized for a single function, such as backup, file services or disaster recovery, that are deployed in silos that don’t interoperate. 

And while a wave of newer entrants, including ourselves, brought SaaS-based versions of these tools to market, they didn’t address the mass data fragmentation issue that added dozens more single-purpose ‘service silos’ to the mix. 

Increasing the importance of data backup to business

In the context of a fast-changing economic and technological environment, data backup matters now more than ever before. If your business accidentally deletes files, or if errant outsiders get hold of your information, you need to know that your data is safe, secure and ready for retrieval.

So what does a successful approach to backup look like, and how can your organisation benefit from having a reliable and effective approach to data backup? Here’s four reasons why data backup is a business essential.

1. You’re ready for the worst-case scenario

Ransomware isn’t just a problem, it’s quickly becoming a nightmare for businesses and the IT professionals charged with protecting an organisation’s data.

Recent high-profile attacks – such as those affecting the Colonial Pipeline, food-processing company JBS and Ireland’s Health Service Executive – show that the ransomware problem is likely to get worse before it gets better. Cybersecurity Ventures estimates ransomware will cost the world approximately $20 billion this year, which is 57 times more than it cost in 2015. 

The rise of the Internet of Things is leading to a huge rise in connected devices that could be susceptible to attack. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts the global damage from ransomware could reach $265 billion annually by 2031.

In addition to strong defence tools, like firewalls and two-factor authentication, organisations must invest in modern backup solutions. Then, if the worst happens, you can retrieve your business and get up and running quickly, without letting down your customers or paying a ransom to hackers.

2. You’re ready for the hybrid future of work

The cloud is now very much a business-as-normal activity. COVID-19 accelerated global spending on public cloud services and the sector is forecast to grow 23.1% in 2021 to total $332.3 billion, up from $270 billion in 2020, according to Gartner.

The analyst says heavy use of on-demand IT, heightened concerns over ransomware and complexities associated with data management are forcing CIOs to explore alternative backup solutions – and the cloud is playing a crucial role here, too.

Businesses can improve their backup processes by using an as-a-Service approach to either compliment existing on-premises backup, or in its own right. While some businesses are still working out if the cloud is right for them many others use multiple cloud-based solutions and as such your business can use the cloud to protect its crown jewels – and recover data quickly and effectively when it needs to.

A cloud-native solution backs up data and applications in the cloud and on-premises, with all the big benefits of scalability, flexibility and efficiency that on-demand IT brings. Whether you’re working on-premises or in the public cloud, an as-a-Service approach is a great fit for the hybrid future of work, no matters what happens next.

3. You’re ready to benefit from more effective data management

Backup isn’t just about giving your business a security blanket. Yes, it’s great to know you have support when things don’t turn out as expected, but your backup strategy should also help you to create a much more effective approach to data management. Backup done right has real return on investment (ROI) capabilities. 

CIOs and their line-of-business peers continue to be swamped by data. Spending on big data analytics is set to grow 4.5 times by 2025, according to analyst Frost & Sullivan. Such spending shows your business will be increasingly reliant on making the most of the information it holds, so data management has never been more critical.

That’s where backup can help. While the backup service you use needs to be simple, the benefits it brings to your business must be broad. Look for a service with an easy-to-use interface that allows employees to manage data simply, regardless of their location.

Your backup solution should include data management tools as standard, which let your employees search information and then run applications directly on data, so that they can generate the game-changing insight your company needs.

4. You’re ready to innovate and create new value

There’s no justification for not investing in data backup – the impact of downtime on the bottom line could be catastrophic. But despite this potential for disaster, some companies are still slow to make the right commitment to backup, reports Enterprise Strategy Group.

One explanation is complacency: if your business hasn’t been hit by hackers, or your services have run effectively for a long period of time, you might think investing in backup is an unnecessary expense. Rather than spending cash on an insurance policy, some managers would rather direct funds to other areas of the business.

However, investing in data backup isn’t a choice. More than just being an insurance policy, data backup should be the foundation for business growth. If your business relies on data – and as Harvard Business review recognises, every organisation does – then it needs to be safe.

If your data is backed up, you have the built-in security of knowing you can make creative decisions – such as in test and development – without putting your organisation at risk. Look for a backup provider with a strong ecosystem of supporting apps that allows you to do much more, whether it’s running reports, producing analytics or establishing compliance.

It’s time for Next-Gen

We believe the legacy data management industry has failed to deliver the solutions needed by today’s digital businesses, and in some way, that hasn’t helped make backup become the business essential it absolutely should. IT is in an increasingly untenable position given relentless data growth, flat to lower budgets, and pressure to deliver more business value.

Incremental improvements won’t cut it. Instead, IT needs a modern approach: a simpler, more secure and smarter way to take back control of their data across a dynamic multicloud landscape with minimal IT effort, that can also help unlock latent value for competitive advantage. When we look at the finance industry, can we afford not to take data protection more seriously?