Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 78 | Page 33

EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
ADRIAN MOIR , TECHNOLOGY EVANGELIST & PRINCIPAL
ENGINEER , QUEST

Organisations need to focus on three different areas in relation to backup : proactiveness acquired through immutability and access control , shared cloud security responsibilities and cost optimisation as data volumes skyrocket .

Recovering data from a backup after a ransomware attack is the cure to the problem , but prevention will always be better than a cure . Data must be secured from both a data and an access point of view , which can be done through MFA , obfuscating data sets , encryption of data sets , immutable data and more . With plenty of solution options out there , organisations should choose to provide the level of immutability and access control needed to proactively stop ransomware attacks before they happen .
Most businesses assume their data security is totally in the hands of their cloud providers , which can lead to unfortunate situations when data is not backed up . This is why organisations must follow the shared responsibility model , which discourages the ‘ out of sight , out of mind ’ attitude and reduces the risk of lost data . Unfortunately , those following the model struggle with backups , because data is stored in slow object Blob storage and the system is designed for the endpoint user – not the IT admin ’ s backup experience . Going forward , we expect to see new approaches to APIs that provide faster data restoration and give cloud customers more control and speed over their backups . for running backups . Understanding your data set and then intelligently planning for when things go wrong allows organisations to recover prioritised data faster and optimise how and where money is being spent . By focusing on these three areas , organisations can ensure that they have an effective backup process to improve their data resilience across the organisation .
Going forward , we expect to see new approaches to APIs that provide faster data restoration and give cloud customers more control and speed over their backups .
Data is growing at a rapid , exponential pace , so much so that some businesses can ’ t afford to protect everything . To reduce a negative impact on revenue and reputation , organisations must make informed decisions about which data systems are essential
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