TRENDING
“
AS WORKFORCES
BECOME MORE
MOBILE AND
THE BARRIERS
BETWEEN
WORK AND
PERSONAL LIFE
BREAK DOWN,
COMPANY DATA
HAS BECOME
DISPERSED
ACROSS
NUMEROUS
ENVIRONMENTS.
Johnny Karam,
Regional Vice
President, Emerging
Region, Veritas
Technologies
sensitive or risky information is properly
managed and protected, regardless of where
that data lives. This broad visibility into
data helps companies comply with ever-
increasing and stringent data protection
regulations that require discrete retention
policies be implemented and enforced across
an organisation’s entire data estate. of organisations in the UAE believe that
their cloud service providers should share
responsibility for managing data in the cloud,
although cloud provider contracts usually
place data management responsibility on
businesses. Just 23% of UAE businesses
stated that it is their responsibility to manage
the data on their cloud.
Public cloud and mobile environments
represent the weakest links in data
security, with the majority of data across
these environments most likely to be left
unclassified and potentially unprotected. “As workforces become more mobile and the
barriers between work and personal life break
down, company data has become dispersed
across numerous environments,” said
Jyothi Swaroop, Vice President, Product and
Solutions, Veritas. “When data is fragmented
across an organisation and has not been
properly tagged, it is more likely to go ‘dark’,
threatening the company’s reputation and
market share if it falls foul of data protection
regulations such as GDPR. So it’s vital that
organisations take full responsibility for
ensuring their data is effectively managed
and protected.”
Just 2% of companies in the UAE claim to
have classified all their data in the public
cloud, while only 7% have classified all of
the data that sits on mobile devices. In
addition, an overwhelming majority (83%)
of UAE companies admit they have classified
less than half of their public cloud data – the
highest of all countries, followed by China at
81% and Singapore at 67%, while 61% of
UAE businesses have classified less than half
of the data that sits on mobile devices.
Veritas’ previous 2018 UAE Databerg
Report revealed that an alarming 50%
24
INTELLIGENTCIO
back-up and recovery of data (48%)
among their top key drivers for day-to-day
data management. Yet the majority of
respondents admit that their organisation
still needs to make improvements in all of
these areas.
“A company’s dark data reservoir may
be out of sight and out of mind for many
organisations, but it’s an enticing target for
cybercriminals and ransomware attacks. The
more organisations know about the data
they hold, the better they will be at judging
its value or risk,” said Swaroop.
“But with the average company holding
billions of data files, manually classifying
and tagging data is beyond human
capability. Businesses must implement data
management tools with algorithms, Machine
Learning, policies and processes that can
help manage, protect and gain valuable
insights from their data, regardless of where
it sits in their organisation.”
The dark age of data
Organisations consider strengthening data
security (65%), improving data visibility
and control (42%) and ensuring effective
Johnny Karam, Regional Vice President,
Emerging Region, Veritas Technologies, said:
“The time has come for data management
to be accorded the importance it warrants
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