www.managedITmag.co.uk 35 DATA PROTECTION Data protection forgotten in cloud and AI expansion Enterprise disaster recovery strategies, traditionally designed for on-premises IT infrastructure, are lagging behind the surge in cloud application usage and the integration of AI technologies, says Keepit. Its warning follows a Keepit-sponsored survey of IT decision-makers published by Foundry, highlighting patchy data protection strategies in companies with 1,000+ employees, and its own study, The great balancing act: Cybersecurity leaders tackle rising pressures, based on interviews with CISOs and CIOs. While 70% of respondents surveyed by Foundry report that their financial applications are covered by data protection strategies, only 50% say the same of their E-commerce and HR management systems. Under half say it about their CRM systems (48%) and ERP systems (42%). The Foundry report, Can data protection keep pace with the shifting landscape?, reveals that only between one third and one quarter of other systems are properly covered, including critical transaction-based systems, custom applications and collaboration and productivity tools. Moreover, only half of organisations have incorporated cloud-stored SaaS data into their disaster recovery plans – although an additional 40% are planning to address this gap soon. A participant in a recent Keepit CISO roundtable said: “We solved many of these challenges 10 to 15 years ago, but with the move to cloud, it’s like we’re starting from scratch again.” Compliance is a top concern for 73% of survey respondents, with data governance (53%) and enterprise backup and recovery (45%) also ranking highly at a time of greater regulatory scrutiny and increased cybersecurity risk. Keepit CISO Kim Larsen highlights AI as another data protection challenge: “Good data protection is essentially ‘data classification plus good recovery capabilities’. If you understand your data and can recover uncorrupted versions of it fast, you have a solid foundation to ensure business continuity, compliance and recovery. But this is easier said than done. The complexity of implementing new initiatives, such as governance over data used by large language models (LLMs) and the need to balance conflicting IT demands, pose additional challenges.” He added: “Data protection remains a cornerstone of organisational resilience in the face of growing technological advancements. As CISOs and CIOs navigate these challenges, their ability to enable and protect data-driven innovation will define their success. Robust data security and backup strategies are essential for balancing innovation and protection, ensuring that organisations can thrive in the digital age. Effective communication of cyber risks to stakeholders and demonstrating the ROI of cybersecurity initiatives are critical.” www.keepit.com data storage, ingress/egress and retention (with the option to retain data for up to 99 years). This, he says, simplifies budgeting and makes it easier, from a financial planning perspective, for growing (or acquiring) businesses to scale their use of the product. “From the outside we look similar to others, but peel back one layer of the proverbial onion and we’re very different commercially and technically.” Technical expertise As well as selling its solutions through a network of resellers, Keepit has OEM agreements with several other vendors, which Mumford cites as validation of the company’s technical expertise. These include relationships with Arcserve, which uses Keepit technology in its unified data protection and recovery solution for on-premises and off-premises workloads, and HPE Zerto. “HPE Zerto is a really important relationship for us,” says Mumford. “We started the relationship with Zerto pre-HPE. After HPE bought Zerto, they did due diligence on us as an OEM partner for SaaS data protection and now the whole of HPE can sell our product. That’s great validation for a smaller vendor.” As businesses of all sizes struggle to incorporate SaaS solutions into their disaster recovery strategies (see box) while continuing to move applications to the cloud, the need for a solution like Keepit is only going to grow, giving Mumford plenty of scope to put the pedal to the metal. www.keepit.com Kim Larsen
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