Instead of celebrating World Backup Day 2024 for accomplishing another year of successful backups, I recommend using it to look forward to a year of testing recovery. Instead of starting data protection strategies by planning backups, organizations should flip their mindset and start by planning recovery: What data needs to be recovered first? What systems need to be back online fastest? How do you make that happen?

Together, backup and recovery form the backbone of a solid data protection strategy.

Data protection and the resulting data resilience are crucial because ransomware and other cyberattacks aimed at mass disruption by compromising data are the greatest risk organizations face right now. Downtime and outages from natural disasters and human error are also top concerns addressed through data backup and recovery, but malware can compromise everything across today’s complex, heterogeneous, multi-cloud data environments, resulting in monthslong and even permanent business disruption. 

Not only are ransomware attacks potentially devastating, but they’re also rampant. According to recent Veritas Technologies research, a sizable majority (65%) of companies say that over the past two years, their organizations have been the victims of at least one successful ransomware attack in which hackers were able to infiltrate their systems.

Against that backdrop, here are three key considerations when re-evaluating your data protection strategy with a recovery mindset this World Backup (or should I say Data Resilience) Day:

• Uniting data protection with data security and data governance improves cyber resilience. Malware attacks affect the entirety of IT. Multiple teams typically manage the response using disparate tools. Hackers love patchwork defenses because the interaction points can become potential vulnerabilities. An integrated ecosystem of data security, data protection, and data governance is the only way to achieve gap-free cyber resilience. 
• The cloud is not inherently safer. In the cloud-native era, organizations often incorrectly assume they’re buying an outcome, when they’re really buying infrastructure. There’s a shared responsibility model between CSPs and their customers around data protection that far too many fail to understand. CSPs are responsible for the resilience of the cloud, but customers are responsible for the resilience inthe cloud. You’re still responsible for protecting your data.
• Today’s complex, heterogeneous, multi-cloud environments require autonomous data management. The proliferation of applications and data from edge to core to cloud is unprecedented. Real-time manual protection is no longer possible. Reducing operational complexity through data management that responsibly harnesses AI and hyper-automation to continually self-provision and self-optimize should be your goal.

In conclusion, data protection – backup and recovery – is insurance against business disruption from downtime and outages caused by things such as natural disasters; human error; and especially malware, including ransomware. The three considerations outlined here are important to ensure your data is resilient now and in the future.