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
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.