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sSurya Varanasi , CTO , StorCentric
Small and medium enterprises ( SMEs ) faced similar challenges as their large enterprise counterparts when the pandemic shut down much of the world ’ s economy and employees were sent home virtually overnight . Many SME businesses failed for reasons such as consumers staying home , supply chain issues and the unbearable weight of brick-and-mortar overhead obligations . While others that had the option to do so , simply were unable to successfully transition to remote work as they didn ’ t have the IT infrastructure or expertise in place to enable its success . However , for those SMEs that were able to pivot and recognise that secure , efficient ( i . e ., fast and easy ) and costeffective data access – for both employees and customers – had to become the number one priority , they not only survived but thrived .
Surya Varanasi , CTO , StorCentric
For these successful SMEs , cybersecurity has and continues to be a top priority . They know that while large enterprise data breaches make headlines , SMEs are getting successfully hacked in equal if not greater numbers . During the rise of the pandemic , smart SMEs recognised the necessity of layered defences that started with powerful passwords , enlisted safe and secure Software-Defined Perimeters ( SDP ), leveraged security protection and anomaly detection solutions and continued with Unbreakable Backup .
As backup has become today ’ s cybercriminals ' first target via ransomware and other malware – an Unbreakable Backup solution provides SMEs with two of the most difficult hurdles for cybercriminals to overcome – immutable snapshots and object locking .
Immutable snapshots are by default , writeonce-read-many ( WORM ) but now some vendors have added features like encryption where the encryption keys are in an entirely different location than the data backup copies . And then to further fortify the backup and thwart would-be internal and external criminals , with object locking layered on top of that , data cannot be deleted or overwritten for a fixed time , or even indefinitely .
Still , many SMEs continue to struggle today . While some do require more traditional ‘ streetside ’ face-to-face contact , others have simply
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CYBERSECURITY ONLY REALLY BECOMES AN ISSUE WHEN IT IS AN ISSUE .
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