FEATURE
• Data volume is growing exponentially.
The amount of data produced
doubles every two years, with an
anticipated 50-fold growth from 2010
to 2020. A temporary solution would
be to only protect live, primary data,
but more businesses than ever are
now also getting insights from data
in secondary storage. So, not only is
there more data overall, the data in
secondary storage is also becoming
more business-critical and needs to
be protected too
Fortunately, there are practical steps
that organisations can take to overcome
these challenges. Data protection should
be a part of a business’ cybersecurity
strategy, as it is as much related to
cybersecurity as it is to storage.
In addition to this, data risk and loss can
come from various sources, including
internal, external, malware, system
failure, human error, fire and flood.
Essentially, businesses need to have a
management and recovery plan that can
be used in each of these scenarios.
However, it will always be hard to protect
what you cannot see and today, data
seldom lives within the IT walls of an
organisation; existing in the cloud,
running on dispersed applications
and through third-party networks.
Unfortunately, many businesses
assume these third-party vendors
are responsible for the data they
are entrusted with and many believe
that migrating data to the cloud will
automatically provide advanced security.
This is not the case.
Companies should not forget that
they are responsible for the data they
own regardless of where it resides
and it’s important for organisations
to understand this, particularly with
GDPR and other similar regulatory
requirements now in place. Now more
than ever, organisations need to know
where all their data is stored and how
much of it is relevant in order to drive
bottom-line value across the business.
Organisations need to grant access to
its data, all of the time. This is essential
due to the rise of cybercrime over the
38
last decade. Utilising a unified, ‘single
pane of glass’ data protection and
management platform can mean that
companies see all of their data, all of
the time, regardless of where it resides.
Given the role data will continue to
play for organisations of all sizes in the
future, protecting it must be at the top of
the agenda for any 21st century, future-
facing CIO or CISO.
Strengthening disaster recovery
TODD
TODD MATTERS,
MATTERS, CHIEF
CHIEF
ARCHITECT
ARCHITECT AND
AND CO-FOUNDER
CO-FOUNDER
OF
OF RACKWARE,
RACKWARE, OUTLINES
OUTLINES HOW
COMPANIES
SHOULD
BOLSTER
HOW COMPANIES
SHOULD
THEIR
DISASTER
BOLSTER
THEIR RECOVERY
DISASTER
STRATEGY.
RECOVERY STRATEGY.
Can you detail the three ‘must-
have’ criteria for IT teams as they
search for tools to maximise
uptime and strengthen disaster
recovery plans?
The first criterion may seem obvious,
but the tool needs to meet requirements.
Sometimes, there’s a tendency to go
for something that has a ‘wow factor’,
even though it doesn’t meet all of your
conditions. Having a firm understanding
about what’s required of the product in
question is very important.
Secondly, IT teams need to gauge
the simplicity of the solution. There
are a lot of products in the market.
Some products do an adequate job of
meeting requirements, but the workflow,
installation, maintenance and upkeep is
just way too complicated. IT teams need
to assess the simplicity of a product
to ensure it isn’t doing more harm than
good and that it is easy to utilise.
Thirdly, IT teams should look to deploy
a single solution that meets multiple use
cases. This allows for a bit of blending.
For example, there are products that
blend backup and disaster recovery or
mobility tools. A lot of IT organisations
have a huge number of products
that they have to maintain and train
personnel on. By minimising the number
of products, companies will see a huge
savings in personnel costs, as well as
capex costs.
Issue 14
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