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Metallic 2021 Predictions: Data Gravity and Ransomware

vmblog 2021 prediction series 

Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2021.  Read them in this 13th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

Data Gravity and Ransomware

By Manoj Nair, General Manager at Metallic

It has been a busy year for IT professionals as well as for Commvault. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many to accelerate their cloud adoption and other digital transformation initiatives, making it more important than ever for them to intelligently manage, move and protect business critical data. This growing need for intelligent data management has increased demand for Commvault's data protection solutions, -- including its new Backup as a Service solution, Metallic, as professionals seek innovative ways to simplify the management of their organization's data, whether it resides on-premises, on multiple clouds, or on the laptops that they and other people at their organization are using to work from home. 

As you find yourself wondering what 2021 might hold for you as you are likely working from home this holiday season, here are some of the data management challenges, opportunities, and other market developments that Metallic's Manoj Nair, General Manger, predicts you and other IT professionals might face in 2021.

Companies Will Race to Solve a New Data Gravity Problem - Employees Working from Home
  • COVID-19, and the massive shift it has caused in the number of employees working from home, has exacerbated companies existing data gravity challenges. Even if (and hopefully when) the pandemic subsides a much more distributed workforce is here to stay - and with a more distributed workforce comes more distributed data. This difficulty compounds companies existing data gravity problem with their on-premises infrastructure These companies want to move their applications and workloads to the public cloud, but the gravity of data on existing on-premises infrastructure makes this difficult, hindering these company's digital transformation initiatives. Expect to see in 2021 a surge of corporate investment in technologies and services that allow them to address this data gravity challenge. For example, enterprise demand will help drive the growth of new wired 10G technologies and wireless 5G technologies that allow companies to ensure the connection between their edge data and their clouds is fast, responsive, reliable, and secure. In addition, expect to see greater adoption of Backup as a Service (BaaS) and other intelligent data management solutions that enable companies to move much of the on-premises data and the data found on employee laptops to the cloud, while also providing them with the ability to secure, protect, govern, and otherwise control the distributed data that remains at the edge. Companies will also invest in training and other change management services that will enable them to build a cloud-based culture for their distributed workforces. Companies that confront this data gravity problem head-on can keep their increasingly distributed data environments from slowing their move to the cloud -- a move they must make if they hope gain the flexibility, scalability and agility they need to foster innovative in today's digital economy.

The Growing Ransomware Threat Will Increase Demand for Built-In Security and Data Backup

  • At the start of 2020, cyberattacks were already on the upswing. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, things have only gotten worse - in April the FBI's Cyber Division cited a 400% increase in cyberattack complaints from pre-coronavirus levels, with as many as 4,000 occurring a day. This increase in attacks should come as no surprise. In this environment, with companies rapidly moving on-premises applications to the cloud, and many employees now working from home on insecure networks, enterprises have exposed the soft belly of their security systems to cyber criminals. To counter this threat, expect to see enterprises move to quickly put in place Defense-In-Depth strategies that use a combination of attack detection, data security, and data backup to fend off and (in the worst case) rapidly recover from a growing number of sophisticated ransomware and other cyberattacks. Firewalls and other standalone security technologies are an essential to any Defense-in-Depth strategy, but they are not enough. Businesses must also ensure that security is built into their applications. This built-in security both provides another layer of security and also moves security technologies closer to the data it is designed to protect. In addition, companies will increase their adoption of new Backup as a Service (BaaS) solutions that allow them to quickly recover data if an attack does find a way through their standalone security solutions and their applications' built-in security. With these BaaS solutions companies can back up their cloud, on-premises, and endpoint primary data to an air-gapped cloud service. This additional layer of protection provides companies with a pristine secondary copy of their primary data that they can restore if a cyberattack does find a chink in their cyberattack detection and data security armor. With these three elements of a Defense in Depth strategy in place and working together - threat detection, data security and data backup - enterprises can emerge unscathed from this perfect storm of cybersecurity threats.
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About the Author
 
Manoj Nair 
 
An avid foodie, Manoj knows you need more than a recipe for success - it requires vision, creativity, experience working the line, and an unstoppable drive to succeed. With an appetite and passion for creating cloud solutions, he and our nimbly driven Metallic team are focused on accelerating the innovation and growth of Commvault's Software as a Service (SaaS) business. The former CEO and Co-Founder of HyperGrid, Manoj has served up cloud and security offerings for HPE, EMC, VMware and RSA, and holds more than 12 information management and security patents. He has a Master of Computer Science degree from Clemson University.
Published Wednesday, December 16, 2020 7:28 AM by David Marshall
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