Today is World Backup Day, a date that recalls the importance of always having a backup that allows the service to be reestablished as soon as possible in the event of any contingency. On the occasion of this day, Commvault offers its vision on backup and data management today.
· Backup has become a priority for companies. While at the beginning of the 2000s, backup was considered a not very innovative system with little added value, in recent years this technology has become much more important, since it has proven to be the only one that effectively protects the most effective asset. important of any company: the data. In 20 years, data has gone from writing data to tape to solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence that automatically identify the data to be protected, when and where to store it, and for how long. Also, the ability to index backup data provides essential support both for business and to facilitate any search for information related to legal or regulatory actions such as the GDPR.
· Always be prepared for the worst: Events like the recent fire in one of the largest data centres in Europe, or the ransomware attack that has left a major organization in Spain without service, are examples of the unforeseen events that organizations face. Although it is inherent in human nature to hope for the best, in a business context, the smartest thing to do is always have a contingency plan for the worst. Businesses should always operate on the assumption that their data is under constant threat because it is. Whether it’s hardware failure, human error, data breach, ransomware attack, or natural disaster. Having a plan backed by the right technology solutions, knowledge and processes will ensure that, in the event of a crisis, data can be recovered quickly, avoiding the business discontinuity
When implementing a backup system, you have to focus not only on the efficiency and cost of backup
· Contemplate all types of threats: the most popular threat today are ransomware attacks where the last defence of companies is to be able to recover data that has been encrypted from a backup copy. But do not forget that human errors or hardware failures continue to occur and are the main reasons for data recovery in companies on a day-to-day basis.
· The importance of RPO and RTO: Some organizations forget that the main objective of data protection is recoverability. When implementing a backup system, focus not only on the efficiency and cost of the backup but on the times and metrics that are important to the recovery process. The recovery point objective and the recovery time objective are the two most important metrics that should always be present in service level agreements between IT and business departments.
· Increase in complexity in the IT environment: during the last year, several trends have been seen in the IT environments of companies, which have added complexity to them and generate new challenges. For example, the growth of SaaS applications has increased and will continue to do so until it reaches $ 120.9 billion in 2021, according to Gartner. Also the use of containers: the consulting firm warns that 85% of companies will run containerized applications in production by 2025. And the use of multi-cloud, which in 2021 will be used by 90% of organizations, as indicated by a recent Flexatara report.
· The effect of data dispersion. This complexity in the environment has also generated a dispersion of the data, which, in turn, multiplies the threat factors. Therefore, it is essential to have a solution that not only protects the data but also recovers it quickly in case of need, that adjusts to the criticality of the application and the data, while reducing the cost to the company, as well as the simplicity of operations.
· The demand for backup as a service is taking off: Backup-as-a-Service solutions are becoming popular for several reasons: they offer an optimal user experience, with a friendly, simple and seamless environment. Plus, deployment and adoption time is minimal, and they don’t require any resources to be dedicated to the maintenance, management, and custody of your assets. On the other hand, they offer predictability and cost reduction, since you pay only for what you consume and there are no additional costs of oversized and idle assets. At the same time, they offer the reliability and flexibility to deploy new backup services transparently, even with multiple cloud providers. Finally, they take advantage of cloud technologies to improve security.