In today’s landscape, the imperative of data security for organizations has escalated to unprecedented levels. However, it is worth reconsidering whether every organization truly comprehends this urgency. Presently, a vast majority of organizations, regardless of size and geographical location rely on cloud infrastructure for various advantages such as ubiquitous accessibility, scalability, availability, scalability, flexibility, cost reduction, business continuation, and more. Cloud security represents a shared responsibility between organizations utilizing cloud services and the providers offering them. Unfortunately, a prevalent misconception continues among organizations, incorrectly assuming that cloud service providers alone are responsible for securing and backing up public cloud data. However, the onus of ensuring regular data backups lies with the organizations themselves, not with the cloud service providers. Notably, in India, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs has mandated the daily backup of all electronic records and relevant documents on servers physically situated within the country.
Significance of World Backup Day
In an age where digital data is the driving force of businesses and individuals, the necessity of backing up critical information cannot be stressed more. With cyber threats evolving continuously and disrupting business operations, World Backup Day observed annually on 31st March serves as a timely reminder to organizations to fortify their defenses.
This annual observance offers a timely opportunity for organizations to safeguard their data from cyber threats and potential losses. Given that cyber threats remain a leading cause of business disruptions, organizations must elevate their data protection measures to mitigate risks of revenue loss, customer attrition, and damage to brand reputation. As we commemorate another World Backup Day this year, the imperative of safeguarding our digital assets has never been more evident. This year’s theme, “Save Digital Memories” highlights the shared responsibility of individuals and organizations in safeguarding everything from personal photographs to critical business data and records essential for business continuity. By implementing robust backup strategies organizations can mitigate the potential impact of data loss incidents or data breaches.
Ensuring both the integrity and availability of data stands as a top concern for organizations in the modern interconnected landscape. Various types of disasters, ranging from ransomware attacks and natural calamities to cyber intrusions and human errors, emphasize the need for comprehensive data protection measures. Emphasizing the criticality of robust backup strategies, cybersecurity experts advocate for continuous vigilance and adherence to best practices to mitigate the impact of potential data loss incidents or breaches.
Mitish Chitnavis, CTO iValue Group said, “Organizations have to be ready to face any unprecedented situations with a robust Disaster Recovery plan in place, where backup systems play a key role. This World Backup Day provides an opportunity for organizations to revisit their backup systems, identify gaps, and strengthen their overall security posture. By doing so, organizations can minimize downtime and maintain business continuity in the event of a security incident.”
Data backups are not only crucial for maintaining smooth business operations but also serve as a fundamental security measure. It is imperative for organizations to reevaluate their data storage strategies and enhance their sustainability.
Rajarshi Bhattacharyya, Chairman and Managing Director, ProcessIT Global remarked, “As we continue to strengthen our cybersecurity portfolio to further protect businesses against the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats, we remain unwavering in our commitment to upholding the highest standards of data management by implementing best practices. On this World Backup Day, I wish to emphasize the importance of adopting a multi-layered approach to data backup that not only boosts data resilience but also serves as a strong defense against the many risks posed by cyber adversaries.”
Key effective tips to back up business data
- Identify critical data essential for maintaining business continuity and ensure its regular backup across multiple locations.
- Leverage automatic scheduling to establish reliable and uninterrupted backups, eliminating the need for human intervention.
- End-to-end encryption is imperative when backing up data to the cloud, ensuring that data remains securely protected throughout its transfer from the system.
- Regular testing of backups is essential to validate their effectiveness and integrity, ensuring their readiness for restoration in the event of a security incident.
- All employees and stakeholders should be educated about the role and importance of data backup.
- Regularly review and update the backup plan to ensure its relevance and effectiveness.
As we celebrate World Backup Day 2024, let us acknowledge the importance of data resilience in protecting our digital future. It is crucial to reaffirm our commitment to safeguarding our digital assets and preserving the integrity and accessibility of data in today’s interconnected world. By prioritizing data backup, we can secure our data and digital assets, ensuring a secure and resilient digital environment for future generations.
Mr. Sandeep Bhambure, Vice President and Managing Director, India & SAARC, Veeam Software “In an era where cyber-attacks and data breaches are rampant, safeguarding personal and organization’s data has become paramount. The Data Protection Trends Report 2024 underscores the urgency for enterprises to bolster their cyber resilience, as cyber-attacks remain the chief cause of business disruptions. A staggering 92% of organizations are committed to increasing their data protection spend this year. Moreover, the survey underscores an increased focus on backup spending, with 88% of organizations expressing a strong inclination towards employing Backup as-a-Service (BaaS) or Disaster Recovery as-a-Service (DRaaS) for at least some of their production servers. The prevalent nature of these threats accentuates the criticality of robust data protection and backup strategies for both individuals and enterprises alike.”
He added, “As we mark World Backup Day, it’s crucial to reflect on the evolving landscape of data protection and ransomware recovery. At Veeam, we believe that backup is not only an organizations last line of defense but also the BEST line of defense. We understand that when primary data and backups are encrypted or destroyed during an attack, it is difficult to recover. Veeam is a staunch proponent of “3-2-1-1-0” rule as it provides a comprehensive approach to data protection, helping with data redundancy, ensuring data recovery, and resilience in the face of potential data loss scenarios. Implementing the 3-2-1-1-0 data backup strategy isn’t just a best practice; it’s an absolute necessity.”
Yogesh Agrawal, CEO, and Co-Founder, of Consistent Infosystems “As we celebrate World Backup Day 2024, let us not only recognize the importance of safeguarding our digital assets but also acknowledge the pivotal role of reliable storage solutions. At Consistent Infosystems, we are committed to empowering individuals and businesses with cutting-edge storage devices such as SSDs, Hard Disks, RAMs, and Pen Drives that ensure data security and accessibility. Today, as we reflect on the value of backups, we reaffirm our dedication to delivering innovative solutions that enable seamless data management and protection. Let’s embrace the spirit of resilience and preparedness as we navigate the digital landscape together.”
Pramod Sharda, CEO of IceWarp India, and Middle East “On World Backup Day 2024, IceWarp reaffirms its commitment to data protection and accessibility. In an ever-evolving digital landscape, backups are not just a precaution but a necessity. We empower users with robust tools and seamless integration to safeguard their valuable information. From documents to emails, every piece of data deserves resilience and security. Let’s celebrate the importance of backups and continue to prioritize the safety of our digital assets. Together, we shape a future where data is protected, accessible, and always within reach.”
Organizations are forced to re-evaluate their data management practices which requires a mindset change about storing data in large databases. While data backups are important to ensure business continuity in the face of a ransomware attack or natural disaster, doing so indiscriminately increases costs and ongoing work risk.
The priority of data privacy and hygiene has become the basis for better security than storage and restoration. Leverage data analytics to uncover redundancies and inefficiencies, streamline data storage, and reduce the organization’s data footprint. Moreover, the integration of privacy-enhancing technologies not only reduces data usage but supports sustainability, good practices, and management systems.
Technologies such as data depersonalization, tokenization, and encryption can serve as bulwarks against privacy breaches and leaks. Excessive archiving of data to ensure only relevant data is retained. By improving data cleansing with enhanced privacy, organizations can optimize data backup spend and strengthen security defenses, including discretion and access control, to protect sensitive information. That’s why World Backup Day is a reminder to start the transition to data backup and security.”
Sumir Bhatia, President- AP, Lenovo ISG “In today’s digital landscape, where data volumes are exploding, a robust backup strategy is essential for companies. APAC organizations, in particular, face challenges like extended backup times and soaring storage expenses. World Backup Day serves as a timely reminder for organizations to re-assess their approach to data protection. Cloud-based backup solutions emerge as an enabler offering scalability and flexibility crucial for navigating the growing complexities and business demands. Moreover, the infusion of AI and machine learning augments data backup processes. It optimizes deduplication and predictive analytics to mitigate storage overheads.
At Lenovo, we recognize these challenges and offer TruScale Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS). With our innovative technology, businesses can transcend the confines of traditional backup models, embracing a future where data resilience is synonymous with operational excellence. Our solution doesn’t just address the challenges; it transforms them into opportunities for growth and efficiency. Lenovo’s TruScale BaaS simplifies backup operations and also fortifies data resilience, offering secure backups that ensure swift restoration post-cyberattacks. Additionally, with cost-efficient on-premises primary backup storage and flexible pay-as-you-go scalability, businesses across Asia Pacific can safeguard critical information effectively while optimizing resource allocation.
In essence, organizations need to navigate the complexities of digitalization with confidence, ensuring that they not only survive but thrive in the digital era. With comprehensive and reliable solutions, businesses can safeguard their data, enhance resilience, and confidently steer through the evolving landscape of data protection and management.”
Remus Lim, SVP Cloudera APJ “As an individual, losing data can be an inconvenience or a painful reminder but for an organization, a data loss incident can be catastrophic. With data breaches, loss or theft becoming increasingly commonplace in today’s digital world, World Backup Day is a timely reminder of the importance of data protection, both on a personal and enterprise level.
Business continuity, preventing financial loss, legal compliance and maintaining customer trust are some of the factors that make protecting data imperative for enterprises. While it is common for enterprises to turn to data protection methods like data encryption and data backup, safeguarding data effectively requires a holistic strategy that includes policies and processes to address concepts like data governance.
With many companies looking to leverage data-driven decision making or technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), the need to have data that is highly available and easily accessed is critical, but being able to trust their data is just as important. Enterprises must ensure that they have data governance frameworks in place so that their data sets are accurate, complete and consistent, and in compliance with government regulations.
Data management may not be the first thing that comes to mind when speaking about data protection, but is a very crucial aspect of securing data. Companies can experience numerous benefits by investing in modern data management platforms that deliver a real-time overview of data across multi-cloud and on premises. Such platforms allow them to actively monitor for threats while accelerating their AI and digital transformation initiatives through instantaneous access to high-quality data.”
Asjad Athick, Cybersecurity lead, Asia Pacific, Elastic “As we commemorate World Backup Day, it is important to reflect on the evolving threat in the ever-changing digital landscape. With increasing cyber incidents and ransomware attacks, the need for robust data protection strategies has never been more critical.
Elastic’s recent ‘Global Threat Report’ highlights the necessity for enterprises to fortify their defenses against sophisticated cyber threats. By leveraging advanced technologies and broad visibility into endpoint behaviors, organizations can proactively safeguard their data assets. Having a robust backup strategy in place can ensure that even if data is compromised, it can be recovered,
At Elastic, we are committed to delivering cutting-edge solutions that empower enterprises to stay ahead of emerging risks. Furthermore, our Security Labs stand at the forefront of threat intelligence, leveraging their extensive data analysis capabilities to provide invaluable insights into the evolving cyber landscape.”
Sudharsan Aravamuthan, Head – Systems Engineering, India, Pure Storage reiterating the importance of safe backup to prevent the consequences of data loss or breach.
“World Backup Day holds significant importance due to the increasingly digital nature of our lives. Today, businesses are 24×7 and any form of data loss can lead to catastrophic consequences.
World Backup Day serves as a reminder for organizations to prioritize data protection, reevaluate their backup and recovery strategies and thereby safeguard against the potential consequences of data loss. It is therefore critical for businesses to adopt a multi-tier cyber resilient data protection architecture to increase resilience and durability. By doing so, businesses can mitigate risks, safeguard their operations, and ensure long-term success.”
John Shier, field CTO, Sophos “Backups are integral to an organization’s resilience. Therefore, it’s not surprising that attackers proactively attempt to compromise them. Early detection and a swift response to anomalous activity on a network can prevent attackers from reaching backups in the first place. Without complete, reliable backups, ransomware attack victims could be forced to make choices they might otherwise avoid, such as paying a ‘basic’ ransom or paying an even higher than normal ransom because there’s no other recourse to get that data back. Ransomware attacks can have serious impacts on business operations; without dependable options for recovery, they can be devastating.”
Parag Khurana, Country Manager, Barracuda Networks (India) Pvt Ltd. said “On World Backup Day, we are reminded of the critical role backups play in protecting us against a myriad of threats targeting our data and systems. It is also an ideal time to reflect on how the risks facing our data are evolving and how our backup systems need to adapt to this changing landscape.
“Most organisations now understand that a resilient, up to date, offline back up is essential to help them recover from a ransomware attack that has resulted in encrypted data. However, there are other underrated and emerging attacks targeting data. One such threat is the risk of data tampering and manipulation by external attackers or malicious insiders.
“To defend effectively against all these risks, you need a resilient backup that is also immutable. Immutable data cannot be changed or deleted and maintains the integrity and authenticity of data. This means that if an attacker does manage to corrupt your communications, documents, and more, your backup files are unaffected and can be used to restore data and prove beyond doubt where content has been falsified. By combining these security measures, organizations can implement a resilient data protection strategy that will safeguard their data now and in the future.”
Vishal Salvi, Chief Executive Officer of Quick Heal Technologies Ltd., emphasizes, “Data constitutes the lifeblood of individuals and organizations, underscoring the imperative of its protection. Whether facing cyberattacks, hardware failures, or human errors, data loss can profoundly disrupt operations. A robust backup strategy acts as a digital lifeline, facilitating swift recovery and minimizing downtime. This not only preserves cherished personal memories but also ensures business continuity and shields against potential financial setbacks with loss of critical data.
Fortunately, a spectrum of backup solutions exists, from cloud storage to user-friendly tools. We advocate not only backing up data but also enhancing backup protocols. Establish regular backup routines, employ dependable and secure solutions, and rigorously test recovery processes. Remember, the effectiveness of a backup lies in its ability to restore data when required. This World Backup Day, let’s prioritize digital resilience, safeguarding our progress, protecting our information, and securing our digital legacy for the future.”
Darren Thomson, Field CTO, EMEAI said “In the modern digital world, traditional approaches to data protection have been seen to fall short as businesses try to recover from cyber attacks. As cybercriminals have grown in sophistication, they no longer just infiltrate and corrupt production data and systems, but also insert malware into backups. So, when organisations prepare to recover from the attack, they are stuck in a vicious cycle of restoring the virus, and often the criminal’s original access, making it almost impossible for them to recover successfully and leaving them little choice but to pay the ransom.
Backups remain critical – how else can organisations quickly return to minimal viable operation after an attack and maintain performance? But now a key target for cybercriminals, the main focus should be on clean backups and recovery. Anomaly detection and early warning systems are essential to this. Only then can businesses stay ahead of the game and prevent cybercriminals from infiltrating backups in the first place. By getting closer to data, particularly the most critical datasets, any unusual activity – such as the encryption of a file – should be analysed and, if it is found to be malware, stopped in its tracks before it has the chance to spread.
However, clean backups are only useful if you have a clean environment to recover into. In addition, a recovery plan that is not tested is no recovery plan at all! The issue is that properly testing and recovering to a clean environment (a “cleanroom”) has historically been very expensive and complex. Now, utilising the power of the cloud and AI, this is possible at a low cost and in a scalable manner. The cloud enables virtual environments to be created that are guaranteed to be malware-free so that clean backups and datasets can be restored and tested with confidence. Such cloud environments can be spun up and down to allow for regular testing whilst keeping costs low so that, in the most critical circumstances, rapid, frictionless, and reliable recovery is ensured. It is ultimately all about cyber resilience – being able to withstand attacks and continue operations even when the worst happens.”
