April 18, 2024 World Backup Day: Insights from Industry Experts

In reflection of World Backup Day, Kevin Cole from Zerto shares his thoughts along with insights from industry experts.

By: Kevin Cole, Director, Product and Storage Marketing, Zerto, a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company

Celebrated annually on March 31, World Backup Day serves as an international reminder for organizations to ensure their cyber resiliency.

In my opinion, World Backup Day is a welcome chance to remind ourselves of the importance of protecting our data and ensuring its availability. However, for most people there’s a simple reality: backup is boring. It doesn’t get the same hype as the latest trends in IT, whether artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, or Web 3.0. Yet backup remains more relevant than ever thanks to the explosive growth in data, distributed from edge to cloud, and an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.

Check out insights from other cybersecurity experts below!

Or Shoshani, co-founder and CEO, Stream.Security 

“With the cloud more at risk than ever, traditional and modern security methods are paramount to protecting your cloud infrastructure. Running our infrastructure on the cloud allows us to be more agile, but we must find ways to ensure data isn’t compromised or encrypted by threat actors. If it is, backing up data is critical to ensuring a fast recovery.  

We live in an era where breaches are inevitable, and it’s crucial to have robust response strategies and straightforward recovery methods for compromised cloud environments. We’ve developed various strategies with backup recovery playing a key role, to mitigate attacks and shorten the mean time to remediation, ensuring business continuity. 

With the option to backup data to multiple locations on-prem and in different cloud service providers, you can ensure the recovery of your data is available in case your cloud is compromised. This World Backup Day, ensure your storage locations are updated with the latest security measures, and back up your data to independent environments.” 

Roger Brulotte, CEO, Leaseweb Canada

“In today’s digital age, deploying infrastructure without robust backup protocols is a risky gamble. A staggering two-thirds of IT experts surveyed voiced concern over the ever-widening gap between exploding data growth and their organization’s ability to secure it. As data volumes surge, organizations need to recognize that data is an asset that demands adequate protection against various threats, including external attacks, hardware failures, and internal security vulnerabilities. 

“Investing in comprehensive backup solutions is more than simply a precaution; it is a necessary step in ensuring the continuity and integrity of corporate operations. Organizations can minimize risks, increase resilience, and ensure the long-term sustainability of their businesses by prioritizing backup strategies and implementing effective data protection policies. In an era of increasing data breaches and cyber threats, proactive steps to secure infrastructure through backup solutions are crucial for mitigating future calamities and guaranteeing business continuity.”

Bart Dries, Senior Operations Director, Leaseweb USA

“In today’s data-driven world, organizations are leaving traditional storage behind. Now, organizations are embracing big data and cloud solutions, unlocking growth through efficient dataset management. World Backup Day has evolved to highlight more than just the importance of securing data through a strong backup system, but also through any and all measures that can combat data loss. Cloud backup solutions offer a comprehensive answer, providing the scale and processing power of cloud computing which can reduce the strain of handling large datasets by simplifying storage, management, and analysis.

Although cloud computing offers undeniable benefits, not every cloud backup solution is created equal. To be adequately prepared for what’s to come, in a world where AI is advancing at lightning speed, organizations need a backup solution where big data and cloud technology can work together, seamlessly. This ensures efficient management of massive datasets, consistent customer accessibility, and comprehensive backup. To achieve maximum protection, organizations need to find solutions designed holistically, in facilities that include backup power and connectivity from varying sources, and adequate physical security, that also meets any necessary compliance requirements. While a robust backup plan, with seamless business continuity, involves multiple moving parts; securing the right providers and tools is a critical first step.”

Carl D’Halluin, Chief Technology Officer, Datadobi

“This World Backup Day, I want to remind everyone that protecting your data with backups isn’t just a technical formality. Given the virtually unavoidable risks of ransomware, malicious or accidental deletions, and countless other threats – it’s absolutely crucial for the health of your business.

The first step? Get your arms around your data. You cannot protect it, if you do not know what you have. Then…

A well-thought-out and tested data backup strategy, together with a combination of robust data security and management solutions, can significantly enhance operations resilience. Add to that the crucial but sometimes missed step of a “golden copy” (i.e., an immutable copy of your business-critical data in a secure and remote site) and your business will be protected today, as well as ideally positioned to support business continuity well into the future.”

Kevin Cole is the Global Director, Technical Product Marketing, at Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. He leads teams focused on creating and sharing Zerto’s story and unique differentiators to the market through a variety of channels. With Zerto since 2015, Kevin’s recent work has focused on Zerto for Kubernetes, Zerto for ransomware resilience, and the positive outcomes that customers are seeing with the joint power of Zerto and HPE GreenLake together. 

Subscribe to Industry Today