Introduction
Conversations around digital transformation have been given a new imperative following the work from the home revolution of the last few years. It has been determined that any successful digital transformation needs to make data protection, through the use of backups, a critical requirement. In this article, we’ll explore some of the reasons why this is the case.
The Challenges Data Presents
One study found that 58% of data backups fail. This number certainly highlights the challenges organizations have in implementing comprehensive backups. There are several reasons why such a large number of backups fail. These include high dependencies on legacy IT technologies and the lack of IT skills needed to implement new technologies to replace those that are outdated.
An example of the challenges faced, particularly by larger enterprises, comes when questions need to be answered regarding how to back up the petabytes of data stored on-premise. Traditional methods would demand the enterprise to fork out an incredible amount of capital. What has proven an increasingly popular answer to enterprise backup solutions is the use of hyper scalable cloud backup offerings.
Reliable Backups
It is clear that technology, particularly cloud technology, has matured to the point where products can be developed to address the needs of any enterprise no matter the size. The next question needing to be answered is how to ensure backups can be reliably called upon in the event of a disaster. This concept is sometimes referred to as making “unbreakable” backups.
The concept is simple, in that your backups should be immutable. With the rise of ransomware and persistent attempts by hackers to delete backups and shadow volumes there arose a need to be more cyber resilient. This resilience meant that not only do backups need to be immutable but other measures needed to be adopted. These include storing access keys in another location to increase security and measures that maintain data integrity automatically reducing instances of human error.
Work from Home
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations were forced into quickly adopting work-from-home protocols. This unprecedented adoption led to severe gaps in security and data protection. The need for comprehensive data recovery policies never went away, in fact, they became more important as modifications needed to be made to existing policies. Organizations that failed to so stood the risk of losing vast amounts of data.
Some organizations found that adopting a 3-2-1 backup strategy helped mitigate the changes in how we work. This strategy dictates that there must be at least three copies of the organization’s data. The three copies are to be split and stored differently with the first copy being the original, the second copy to be stored on-site, and the third to be stored off-site.
While the challenges to data protection have been well-documented, adoption of solutions adequate to the organization’s needs can be slow and at times non-existent. Given advancements in newer technologies, this most certainly means that adoption of data protection need not be slow and can comprehensively address the specific needs of the organization.
