Intelligent CIO APAC Issue 10 | Page 45

CIO OPINION therefore , advisable to first identify specific problems the appliance needs to take care of before committing to one . Here are four common use cases for data protection appliances and the capabilities to look for in potential platforms to find one that matches your business objectives best .
Plug in the loopholes to deal with unplanned disasters
2020 was a crucial year : It forced organizations to re-evaluate their Disaster Recovery plans and identify factors that could lead to data disasters if something unplanned happened . Lack of attention to network security , loopholes in digital infrastructures and poor cyber hygiene were seen as some of the weak points that organizations should rectify .
Now , it is commonly accepted that disasters can come in many forms from ransomware to natural disasters to global pandemic , and it ’ s essential to be prepared for anything . Investing in a robust data protection appliance is a smart move toward protecting the organization . Whenever disaster strikes , it secures the enterprise ’ s data and systems can be up and running in no time .
When identifying the right appliance for your enterprise , look for the following features :
• Turnkey backup , Disaster Recovery , highavailability and cybersecurity capabilities
• High-availability options for continuous data protection
• Bundled flash-accelerated storage , robust server processing , high-speed networking and heterogeneous data protection software
• Support for on-site , off-site and cloud workloads
Cybersecurity is important but data protection is cardinal
It is vital to understand that preventing cyberattacks is not the be all and end all – this is actually what these attacks are targeting . Most often , these cyberattacks intend to disrupt data by :
• Disabling data access
• Stealing enterprise data
• Rendering an organization ’ s data useless
• Publicly exposing sensitive companies or employee data which follows a legal and PR nightmare
• Selling customer data on the DarkNet
• Blackmailing on sensitive data
• Doing repetitive attacks on the same organization once they identify its security loopholes
While cybersecurity is a top priority , the defense mechanism therefore must focus more on rescuing data than preventing the attack itself . Organizations in highly regulated industries such as BFSI and those with known security vulnerabilities should look for an appliance that has :
It is commonly accepted that disasters can come in many forms from ransomware to natural disasters to global pandemic , and it ’ s essential to be prepared for anything .
• Combined cybersecurity and data protection
• Threat prevention and removal capabilities
• Artificial Intelligence and a Deep Learning neural network
Factor in for 100 % uptime of services and infrastructure
Cyberattacks have taken the scale of targeted campaigns that can blanket entire corporate networks of critical infrastructure providers such as hospitals , government offices and financial institutions . In June 2020 , the cyberattack on the National Highway Authority of India servers made headlines across the country . What ’ s important to note is that while the ransomware attack did happen , it led to no data loss .
What most organizations tend to overlook is that the attack itself is not the major problem , the loss of data is . The cost of a data breach is high and going up year by year . A Ponemon Institute report of 2020 helps to explain this context better . In India , the average cost of a data breach in 2020 was US $ 2.0 million , up by 9 % from 2019 at US $ 1.83 million .
When Google services faced a downtime of around 45 minutes in December 2020 , there was a major uproar around the globe – # googledown began trending on Twitter in no time . When organizations of Google ’ s scale and resources can face a disruption to their services , what prevents smaller organizations from having longer and more frequent downtime ?
Today ’ s consumers demand nothing less than 100 % availability for applications . Any downtime , planned or unplanned , does not go down well with them . And then if there ’ s data loss as well , the stakes get exponentially higher .
With such sky-high customer expectations and nomercy attitude , it ’ s crucial that organizations have
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