Data privacy is the numero uno concern of all organizations today. Cybersecurity researchers believe that data backup offers a number of advantages including cyber preparedness, improved cyber resilience, and the access and affordability of cloud. According to a Unitrends’ 2019 survey, 84% of all businesses store data or backups in the cloud to ensure minimal disruption or loss of data.
So, what does 2022 hold for the data storage industry? Being prepared against data loss and data theft are important issues, but the massive impact will come from an increased interest in data storage infrastructure, which includes the multi-cloud environment. †They involve AI, cyber resilience, SaaS applications, workload performance and availability, and reduction of cyber risk.Â
Research firm IDC estimated the worldwide enterprise storage system will rise another 7.6% in 2022 to $33.5 billion. As the data storage industry continues to scale to new heights, it is important to understand the technologies and data backup trends that will influence this growth. Toolbox asked six industry experts to weigh in their views on what to expect from the data storage industry as 2022 unfolds.Â
Here’s a list of six data backup trends for 2022 that every organization must pay attention to:
1. Focus on Cyber Resilience To Backup Data in Multi-Cloud EnvironmentÂ
Scott Baker, CMO and VP of product marketing, IBM Storage
“Enterprises today are focusing on cyber resilience as a top priority, to ensure they can maintain operations and secure their data amidst an explosion in ransomware and an increasingly complex threat landscape. Many have shifted to building cloud-native apps with containers and microservices running in a multi-cloud environment, so their users enjoy a cloud-like experience regardless of whether a particular workload is running in a public cloud or on a cost-effective on-premises infrastructure. AI is becoming essential for ensuring data relevance and data hygiene.â€
See More: 5 Data Backup Best Practices in a World of Cloud Data Storage
2. Protect Unstructured Data for a Secure Cloud Backup
Rob Price, principal solutions consultant, Snow Software
“Enterprises need to focus on combating ransomware, safeguarding cloud data, and protecting unstructured data. Combating ransomware is the highest priority. Hybrid work has more corporate data outside of the corporate firewall than ever before. A strategy for backup is a requirement for safeguarding company data. The cloud fundamentally makes backups a challenge, but every organization should understand the responsibility to protect their cloud data is with them and not the platform provider. Lastly, understanding unstructured data is still a major challenge for the enterprise. Identifying and classifying this data (however daunting) is the only sensible way to ensure appropriate security and retention levels for effective data protection.â€Â
See More: Deep MFA: A Smarter Way to Protect Backups from Ransomware AttacksÂ
3. Invest in an Automated Audit for a Cloud Backup Strategy
Graham Melcher, chief technology officer and co-founder, Hint Health
“Continuous data protection for your key databases, allowing for a RPO of 0 that’s seamless and built-in to the database technology. This is a must have for the peace of mind of our team and our customers. A fully automated, disaster-proof cloud backup strategy. Whether it’s multi-cloud, multi-region or just across availability zones, your cloud-native backup and recovery strategy should withstand the next major cloud outage. Automated testing and validation of your backup systems. Simplify your audit readiness and attestation with an automated report, not testing individual systems by hand.â€
4. Multi-Cloud Backups Will Become Mainstream To Reduce RiskÂ
Ajaya Loya, senior engineering manager, LeanTaaS
“With the pandemic accelerated digital transformation and cloud adoption, exploding data, and rapidly evolving threat landscape, we’re likely to see the following broad trends in backups and disaster recovery: Multi-cloud backups will become mainstream to reduce risk, increase fault tolerance, and minimize single point of failure. Zero trust model is another major trend in the new “remote first and remote friendly†post pandemic normal. The security perimeter is changing to defend against insider and outsider threats. Optimizing for quick recovery times with a reasonably good RTO and RPO is becoming key to minimize disruption to business.â€
See More: Under the Mat or the Flowerpot: The Biggest Risk to Data Security Is Hidden in Plain SightÂ
5. Be Flexible To Keep Some Applications On-PremisesÂ
Gaurav Rishi, vice president of product, Kasten by Veeam
“The use of policy-driven automation to manage how application backups are securely and immutably saved in offsite locations is critical to recovering from accidental or malicious attacks like ransomware. Also, it is important to achieve robust protection regardless of the computer or storage infrastructure. Enterprises need to have the flexibility to keep some applications and environments on-premises while running others in a cloud provider. We’ll see businesses focus on building on the portability constructs of Kubernetes and utilizing resources across clusters and clouds efficiently.â€
6. Backup the Data in Multiple SaaS Applications
John Annand, research director for infrastructure and operations, Info-Tech Research Group
“Backup the data in your (many) SaaS, the SaaS you pay a LOT of money for every month promises to relieve you of all your operational burden. SaaS providers do backups for their own reasons and not yours. Immutable backup or WORM (Write Once Read Many) drives are not just for finicky auditors anymore. Ransomware attacks are becoming more sophisticated and now attack backup systems and their stored data as well. Having a copy of the data that is unchangeable even with an elevated administrator is part of the defense in-depth strategy to deal with this rising attack vector.â€
See More: Top 10 Best Security Practices Exchange Admins Need to Understand in 2022Â
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What data backup trends are you following in 2022 and beyond? Let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!