Companies Need To Develop A New Mindset On Data Protection

With the explosion in the amount of data being created and stored, companies of all sizes, including SMEs are realizing the significance of having more robust and complete data protection strategies and plans. Despite that high profile data breaches around the world is becoming rampant. In an exclusive interaction with CXOToday, Bharat Kumar, Director, Marketing EMEA & APAC at Arcserve, explains how companies can develop a new mindset on data protection. He also outlines how Arcserve is helping organisations to safeguard their data.

CXOToday: What are the recent trends in data protection?

Bharat Kumar: Today, organisations are being more thorough about their data protection policies, procedures and ultimately the solutions they deploy, whether its about their compliance and regulatory requirements, or for commercial wellbeing. The emphasis is also on having data ‘available’ not just on protection. With businesses needing to run around the clock, any downtime is detrimental so business continuity, having a solid disaster recovery plan to ensure as much data as always or instantly available are key business drivers, and this is where data protection is moving. Another key trend is consolidation and management of data across a mixed environment – encompassing physical, virtual and cloud components. Cloud based offerings are more prominent and organizations adding this as part of their infrastructure and solution but they are increasingly looking at vendors who can tick all these boxes rather than deploy different point solutions, in order to reduce complexity and maximize return on their limited IT dollars.

CXOToday: Why do companies need to develop a new mindset on data protection?

Bharat Kumar: One of the key reasons is that data protection has and continues to evolve. Data is a cornerstone of a business and more and more organizations are realizing this and it is not just about having a copy of data somewhere, the need is to have data as available as possible and to recover from any potential failure as quickly as possible. The mindset is shifting towards business continuity, not just disaster recovery but how to avoid the disaster in the first place. Another factor is that with the introduction of different solutions, organizations need to be more aware and educated of  what suits them best. There have been many high profile data breaches around the world and businesses are very weary of the potential threats and the focus on data protection is now part of the top level business agenda, for example, culmination in Data Security Officer roles being added to the more traditional CTO or CIO positions. Compliance and regulatory requirements have also influenced the way organizations think and plan for data protection and management.

CXOToday: Why organisations need to pay attention to ‘data loss as preventative, and not reactive’?

Bharat Kumar: There are multiple reasons for this with the key one being that any downtime associated with data loss, is financially detrimental to the organization. In an ‘always-on’ society companies need to be functioning and seen to be functioning all the time. Secondly, any data loss or breaches create a lot of negative publicity which can take a long time to repair, so brand reputation is also more important than ever, with news being shared in real-time across social media and the internet. Therefore, ensuring a continuous operation, seamless interaction with customers and other key stakeholders, maintaining a competitive edge, requires a preventative and not just a reactive approach to data management.

CXOToday: What are the methods to analyse and utilize the amount of user data that’s being generated?

Bharat Kumar: There are many tools available to organizations to help them track and evaluate data usage. From the basic tools that provide insights into how much data is being created by whom, how often it is being used, accessibility, where it resides etc to much more advanced solutions around ‘Big Data’, Business intelligence, data mining, predictive analytics that enable organizations to create policies and procedures on information management and usage. These types of solutions provide the capability for organizations to make business decisions and plans by using the information much more intelligently.

CXOToday: What are some of the solutions for the organisations to safeguarding the data?

Bharat Kumar: Arcserve Unified Data Protection platform provides 360 degrees data management capabilities. Arcserve UDP is offered as software, appliance and hybrid cloud. Arcserve UDP can also integrate with the key pillars of modern day data centre comprising of Physical, virtual and modern storage. Arcserve UDP Appliances are ideal systems for branch and decentralized offices, or as the primary backup, deduplication, disaster recovery, and cloud gateway appliance for organizations whose resources are stretched.

CXOToday: What is your specific strategy to target the market in the upcoming years?

Bharat Kumar: Our Go To Market strategy revolves around strength of our solutions that are enterprise ready but small team simple & wide reach of our partner network . Organizations that face challenges in terms of resources available to implement & manage complex solutions can easily deploy Arcserve UDP solution. In-fact our UDP Appliance can be unboxed and deployed in less than 15 minutes giving overstretched IT teams much needed flexibility to focus on other mission critical tasks. From channel perspective, Arcserve is 100% channel centric organization and we have solid partner base in India that chose us for some of the prestigious accounts in the country.