Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2019.  Read them in this 11th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed by Steven Lamb, CEO and Co-Founder, ioFabric

Increase in Data Disasters Means Failover is Essential

With a new year comes new challenges, new opportunities, and new technologies that will affect how companies secure their data. And while we don't have a crystal ball, we can confidently say that 2019 will bring some big changes to the industry.

Backups are not enough - and businesses know it

So many companies are going to go through the "ah ha" moment in 2019 when thinking about the vulnerability of their data that it will seem like a collective light bulb has turned on. In fact, companies are already beginning to realize that backups are simply not enough, and this trend is sure to continue into the new year.

Ransomware is a big driver towards this realization. The major and minor attacks over the past year have shown how vulnerable data is, and that backups can easily be corrupted by an attack.

Of course, human error still remains one of the major reason for data loss, something even the most rigorous backups can't fully protect against. And outright failures do happen - equipment itself failing is the number one cause of data loss, and extreme weather or accidents can wipe out entire databases.

Amidst all of these potential points of vulnerability, companies are beginning to wake up to the idea that they need more than just backups. We're going to see a huge surge in interest in true disaster recovery, especially among companies that need uninterrupted access to their data, no matter what disaster may strike.

Ransomware rears its ugly head

2019 will see an increase in the number and severity of ransomware attacks. It is easier than ever for criminals to find ransomware code sources online, and use these to exploit vulnerabilities.

Municipalities have been hit hard in 2018 and they will continue to be explicitly targeted in 2019. According to ZDNet, 19 percent of all ransomware attacks are directed towards municipalities. Government offices seem to be the center of a perfect storm for ransomware attacks - they have a breadth of sensitive information, typically rely on outdated IT systems, and lack extensive IT infrastructure.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to track down the criminals who conduct these attacks as they are most often from overseas and in some cases state sponsored. We're expecting to see a surge in ransomware as attackers become more sophisticated and organizations do their best to ward them off.

Disaster recovery will be a line item - finally!

IT pros are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to protecting their data, and you can expect their concerns to be more accepted by their organizations in 2019. Disaster recovery will finally become a priority, having specifically allocated budgets and targets.

Companies will learn (either through painful experiences with their own data loss or via industry reports and knowledge) that a backup is not disaster recovery - it's a start, but not enough to protect them from critical disasters. True disaster recovery is a fault-tolerant system with failover capability.

There are a number of features that disaster recovery solutions should offer that backups do not: instant restart of important VMs, immutable files, second site, encryption, and verification that backups can and will boot when needed. And the best disaster recovery providers know that no one (or at least very few of us) actually test their backups regularly, so they will do it for you automatically.

A new year and a fresh start

We're hopeful that 2019 will bring more positive change than negative - ransomware attacks might increase, but if businesses are prepared for them, the attackers won't get far. The new year is shaping up to be an exciting time in tech, and we can't wait to see what surprising technologies become the next game changers.

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About the Author

Steven Lamb is a successful serial entrepreneur, who brings a broad range of experience in data storage, Internet security and e-commerce. Lamb's skills in entrepreneurship, strategic positioning, management and leadership have allowed him to successfully lead four previous start-up ventures to which collectively have sold for hundreds of millions. Lamb's current company, ioFABRIC, is in the data storage and disaster recovery arena targeting cloud providers as well as medium to large corporations.