World Backup Day, which is celebrated globally on 31 March, is an annual reminder of the critical importance of data backup. In today's digital age, data has become one of the most valuable assets for individuals and organizations. This includes everything from personal documents to sensitive official data. However, data loss is a common issue that can result from a variety of factors, including hardware failure, software corruption, human error, cyberattack, or anything else. Losing important data can pose a serious challenge, both personally and professionally. This is where the role of backup comes in.
It is a simple and effective way of protecting data from loss or damage, providing a way to recover lost or damaged data easily. World Backup Day reminds us of the importance of taking regular backups and ensuring data security. It also encourages people to review their backup processes and consider implementing new backup solutions if needed. In short, World Backup Day is an important reminder to take data security seriously and take proactive measures to protect our valuable digital assets. Today, on World Backup Day a few IT leaders have shared their views on the role of data backup.
- Balaji Rao, Area Vice President, India & SAARC, Commvault
“With the ubiquitous data taking precedence over today’s modernised digital generation, it is imperative for every organisation to holistically safeguard their prized possession. 2022 surfaced as a hot bed of ransomware incidents in India, with attacks ranging from encryption, data theft, distributed denial of service (DDoS), harassment and many more. Moreover, close to 49% of Indian enterprises cited malicious attacks damaging their backup and data recovery, according to the recent Commvault-IDC study. This threat landscape will only continue to further evolve with attacks becoming more aggressive in terms of sophistication and reach.”
“Data resiliency is plagued by data breaches and becoming a norm in the dynamic business landscape, hence the question now lies in how organizations respond to a particular incident and how quickly they recover from it. As businesses get addicted to modernization of technological capabilities across environments, data resiliency through a comprehensive backup and recovery for hybrid and multi-cloud becomes non-negotiable. To have the highest chance of protection, IT departments must implement enhanced multi-cloud and ransomware protection. It’s that extra element that can take a company’s data from vulnerable to secure. Organisations must also explore the realms of Zero Trust strategy which isn’t just one component like threat detection or recoverability, but a range of technologies working together to create a comprehensive security solution.”
“This World Backup Day, thus, serves as an annual but timely reminder for businesses to revisit and upgrade their data backup and recovery solutions to ensure the restoration of business operations during a crisis/disaster and be prepared for an unexpected incident. Enterprises must rise to the data guardianship challenge and ensure the data model provides secure, ubiquitous, real-time access to services and data. Data recovery can no longer be a siloed activity. Businesses looking to be relevant will need to understand the role data plays in their organization and to roll out data protection capabilities including data backup speedily to ensure they are able to thrive in their own Datasphere.”
- Ripu Bajwa, Director and General Manager, Data Protection Solutions, Dell Technologies India
“Data security is of utmost importance in today's digital age where vast amount of information is being collected and processed by enterprises. Owing to the rise in the frequency and intensity of data breaches, businesses across sectors need to upgrade their data protection strategy. Businesses and IT departments are now looking for backup solutions that can successfully secure data against loss and corruption. Prioritising and leveraging scalable, real-time, and cloud-enabled data protection storage for backup, archival, and disaster recovery, is the need of the hour.”
“Organizations recognise these challenges and are looking for solutions which can help them integrate data protection across legacy and new age cloud native applications. Simple-to-implement solutions which can secure data wherever it may exist, will help in maximising the value of company data. Steady adoption of future-ready backup solutions is bound to benefit Indian organisations in the coming times. This World Backup Day Indian businesses have an opportunity to take cognizance of their data recovery, threat reporting, and transparency across IT environments. This will not only sustain their progress in digital transformation but also, ensure that the pace of innovation doesn’t decelerate due to a cybersecurity incident.”
- Sandeep Bhambur, Vice President and Managing Director, India & SAARC, Veeam Software
“Businesses today face a wide range of uncertainties, from pandemics to cyberattacks to natural disasters. Because of their increased reliance on technology, businesses are becoming more vulnerable to cyber-attacks, losing data, and experiencing business disruptions. According to a recent report by Think Teal and Veeam on ‘State of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery in India – 2023’, around 18% of the businesses in India lost data due to downtime, and more than 20% of the downtime caused has resulted in a financial loss of more than $1 million per hour.
“The cost of such downtime also goes beyond just monetary or data loss. Businesses today are more concerned with their market reputation, brand image, customer loyalty, and a variety of other factors, yet businesses impacted by downtime reported customer loss 55% of the time, damaged brand image 44% of the time, and lower employee productivity 52% of the time.”
“To avoid such damage, businesses must go above and beyond to ensure they have a solid data backup strategy in place, as well as a strong Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan that mitigates business risks and minimizes downtime. On this World Backup Day 2023, we would advise businesses to take a more pragmatic approach towards data backup and begin with implementing the 3-2-1 Rule – three copies of data on two media, with one off site -- and refreshing it to additionally make sure one copy is air-gapped, offline, or immutable, and with zero errors in recovery.”
