Graham Brown, Regional Manager, Commvault SA/SADC.

Managing data has become increasingly difficult and protecting it has never been more important. This is often a challenge, however. With data being both moved to the cloud and repatriated as consolidation events happen, multiple clouds becoming the norm, and data moving closer to the edge and into containers, the landscape is complex, and it complicates data protection. While historical threats like disasters and accidental deletion are still relevant, new threats, specifically ransomware and cyber threats, are emerging faster than ever and attacks can now happen in a matter of minutes. Being able to recover is no longer enough – you need a proactive approach to detect and prevent threats before they attack.

Advancing threats need advancing protection

The threat of ransomware and other cyber-attacks is a real challenge for business, with insider threats and increasingly stealthy methods of attacks happening with more velocity and speed than ever before. The data itself has become the target and is often exfiltrated before many organisations even know they have been breached – it can then be sold, used for extortion or other malicious purposes, and the damage to reputation has already happened.

The reality is that the reconnaissance phase has shortened from weeks or months to a matter of hours and even minutes – the latest attacks could encrypt almost 18 terabytes of data a day, which is roughly equivalent to 3.3 million files. If you apply that to dwell time of seven to nine days that could mean over 160 terabytes of data – an entire company’s worth of data.

It is no longer enough to simply build thicker and taller walls in the hopes that these will prevent breaches and fall back on the ability to recover if a breach does occur. Data protection must advance beyond perimeter defences and backups, because once the damage has been done, it is often already too late. It has become essential to develop proactive capabilities for data protection and improve how businesses respond to cyber events to minimise the blast radius of an attack and accelerate responses to minimise the damage caused.

Early warning is essential

When it comes to protecting your data, every moment is precious, so organisations need to be able to secure data more effectively, defend data more efficiently, and recover data sooner. Today’s solutions need unmatched resiliency to keep data secure wherever it lives with built-in protocols to prevent unwanted access.

Equally, it is critical to have next-generation early warning detection and monitoring to defend your data, increase visibility, and accelerate response, and proven recoverability to allow you to get the data back fast and maintain business continuity. Lack of insight into malware and ransomware attacks can hamper efforts to detect the early stages of file encryption or corruption, allowing the threats to spread further and cause more significant damage.

Data exfiltration is also becoming increasingly prevalent and has the potential to be more damaging than ransomware. Risk analysis of both live and backup data has therefore become essential for helping businesses gain insights into sensitive data across the organisation to drive action and reduce risk associated with obsolete, redundant, or trivial data. It is also essential for modern data solutions to meet increasingly stringent data storage and protection regulations, and to effectively secure credentials to prevent unauthorised access, data breaches and other security incidents.

New solutions for new challenges

Aside from minimising the threat, data security needs to include additional capabilities to defend your data from threats, speed up recovery, and provide better visibility into your security posture. This includes tight integration with security tools and hyperscalers, which is crucial for overall data visibility, and a single solution that will remove the complexity of a web of native data protection tools and platforms. This ensures consolidated views of backup operations so organisations are ready when disaster strikes, can identify potential problems quickly, spot long-term trends and obtain increased visibility into the data risks.

To effectively safeguard data, protection strategies must go beyond perimeter defenses and backups. Commvault's Cleanroom capability provides a secure, isolated environment for sensitive data, protecting it from cyber threats and unauthorised access. Organisations must adopt next-generation data protection solutions with built-in protocols, early warning detection, and monitoring. Essential components include risk analysis, compliance with regulations, and secure credential management. However, data protection is only one part of a comprehensive security strategy. Customers must also secure other layers, such as network security, endpoint security, and identity and access management. Regular updates, vulnerability assessments, and employee education on security best practices are crucial. A holistic approach to security minimises the risk of breaches and ensures robust data protection.