Instead of celebrating World Backup Day 2024 for accomplishing another year of successful backups, I recommend using it to look forward to a year of testing recovery. Instead of starting data protection strategies by planning backups, organizations should flip their mindset and start by planning recovery: What data needs to be recovered first? What systems need to be back online fastest? How do you make that happen?
Together, backup and recovery form the backbone of a solid data protection strategy.
Data protection and the resulting data resilience are crucial because ransomware and other cyberattacks aimed at mass disruption by compromising data are the greatest risk organizations face right now. Downtime and outages from natural disasters and human error are also top concerns addressed through data backup and recovery, but malware can compromise everything across today’s complex, heterogeneous, multi-cloud data environments, resulting in monthslong and even permanent business disruption.
Not only are ransomware attacks potentially devastating, but they’re also rampant. According to recent Veritas Technologies research, a sizable majority (65%) of companies say that over the past two years, their organizations have been the victims of at least one successful ransomware attack in which hackers were able to infiltrate their systems.
Against that backdrop, here are three key considerations when re-evaluating your data protection strategy with a recovery mindset this World Backup (or should I say Data Resilience) Day:
In conclusion, data protection – backup and recovery – is insurance against business disruption from downtime and outages caused by things such as natural disasters; human error; and especially malware, including ransomware. The three considerations outlined here are important to ensure your data is resilient now and in the future.