Industry events such as World Backup Day are sometimes portrayed as ‘unexciting’ or even formulaic reminders to protect our business-critical data. But we believe this data protection message has greater relevance than ever in 2023.
That’s because, amid more frequent and sophisticated ransomware exploits and companies still making do with legacy on-premises storage infrastructures, organisations have surprising scope to both save their business-critical data ㅡ and their CFO’s budget. By embracing innovations like cloud storage, companies can liberate their data while securing it more effectively. In addition, they can also make cost savings over unwieldy on-premises file data infrastructures that drain capital budgets.
Here are some ways to transform company data protection while rethinking the economics of their file infrastructures’ upkeep:
Step #1: Get ahead of ransomware
Ransomware has become such a common threat in today’s world that organisations are now dealing with it as part of their overall cybersecurity initiatives. It’s no longer a question of if your company will be attacked but when it will be attacked. These attacks are also becoming more sophisticated and difficult to detect. In these conditions, organisations must continue exploring smart tools such as scanning at the edge to help detect ransomware attacks more effectively and invest in technologies that will allow them to recover as quickly as possible. Suppose a high-profile organisation can recover in a matter of minutes or hours and be fully operational again with the least amount of productive time lost. In that case, this will be viewed positively by the organisation’s stakeholders ㅡ and cause a surprise for those behind the attack.
Step #2: Protect your data in the hybrid economy
Organisations’ back-up and business continuity plans have had to contend with the rise of the cloud, enforced hybrid/remote working. At the same time, global companies have had to rethink their supply chains after geopolitical shockwaves. Two fundamental questions come with such upheaval:
- Are system outages becoming more common?
- Are companies’ data protection and business continuity plans keeping pace with all the deployment, workplace and supply chain shocks of the last three years?
First, system outages occur for all sorts of reasons. Power, network or server failures, software defects and natural disasters can cause them. And — the most common reason of all — human error. All these risks require different approaches to prevention or mitigation. They generally require CIOs to have system redundancy and additional checks and balances to prevent or mitigate the system outage. Companies that fail to adequately fund and implement these redundancies and checks will likely see more outages and lost productive time.
Second, after the rise of cloud, hybrid/remote work and supply chain reconfiguration, many firms’ backup and business continuity plans fail to keep pace with these external factors. Despite pragmatically adopting hybrid work models, many organisations still rely on generations-old technologies and practices. They assume incorrectly that these ageing assets will provide adequate protection from an attack or data integrity event.
Most companies won’t recover. If they do, it will take a long time and considerable resources. In the event of the company’s data integrity being compromised, IT teams that incorporate modern data protection technologies (cloud) and associated methodologies (unlimited snapshots of data) stand a better chance of recovering faster and with less pain and effort.
Step #3: Rethink backup as you go in the cloud
Many companies still use traditional backup solutions, despite fully or partially transitioning to cloud operations. Companies should reassess their backup and recovery strategy and validate that it is still fit for a cloud-first approach. To help identify the elements of modernisation and contain the risk, CIOs should ask themselves key questions such as:
- How long would it take to recover in the event of an attack?
- How much would that cost the business?
- Would there still be a delta loss of files and data (since the last backup)?
- Are recovery strategies being validated on an ongoing basis?
- Is there a faster / quicker, more transparent alternative?
- What is the total cost of your backup and recovery approach, including staffing costs?
By regularly reassessing their backup and recovery set-ups, companies are not only paving the way to more agile operations but also planning for future cost reductions.
Step #4: Save money using cloud storage
Companies can save money using cloud storage platforms for backup and recovery by leveraging the inherent benefits of cloud services. Enhanced reliability and redundancy can be achieved by leveraging cloud object storage platforms which, by the nature of their immutable file copies, are better suited for the backup of business-critical data than file/block storage. In addition, with the right service provider, IT teams can provide robust protection without additional investments. Cloud storage platforms help ensure reduced capital expenditure, scalability, and flexibility, enabling businesses to optimise their resource allocation. Most importantly, from a cost perspective, they help IT teams avoid overspending on on-premises infrastructure which will always require further planning and maintenance as its storage capacity runs out.
Saving data = saving money
By adopting a risk-contained approach to ransomware attacks and protecting critical data as hybrid work matures, CIOs can phase out legacy on-premises as they expand cloud operations. And by rethinking their approach to back-up and recovery and accelerating recovery times from attacks using cloud storage platforms, hard-pressed IT teams will not only make their data assets more accessible for colleagues who can drive more innovation through actionable insights, but they will also assist CFOs in making IT infrastructure budgets more productive and predictable. Instead of waiting for World Backup Day 2024 for an annual reminder, the time is now to modernise infrastructure to save your data, and your CFO’s budget.
Nasuni Corporation is a leading file data services company that helps organisations create a secure, file data cloud for digital transformation, global growth, and information insight. The Nasuni File Data Platform is a cloud-native suite of services that simplifies file data infrastructure, enhances file data protection, and ensures fast file access globally at the lowest cost. By consolidating file data in easily expandable cloud object storage from Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and others, Nasuni becomes the cloud-native replacement for traditional network attached storage (NAS) and file server infrastructure, as well as complex legacy file backup, disaster recovery, remote access, and file synchronisation technologies. Organisations worldwide rely on Nasuni to easily access and share file data globally from the office, home or on the road.
