Article by: Chua Chee Pin, Area Vice President, ASEAN, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, Commvault
With data becoming a major currency of business and key to decision making across organisations of all sizes, its value has increased exponentially – which is the prime driving force in the spate of ransomware attacks faced by organisations globally, especially in the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.
Ransomware attacks in the APJ region spiked by 168% last year, with an average organisation suffering from over 1,200 weekly attacks. Globally, APJ had the highest number of organisations being attacked weekly compared to the EMEA region and the US, indicating that cybercriminals have set a target on this region.
The current cybersecurity climate means that a good cybersecurity posture is essential for every organisation. This is emphasised by the CSA’s recent introduction of the Cyber Essentials cybersecurity certification scheme, which tags small and large enterprises that have adopted good cybersecurity practices to protect their systems and operations against common cyber-attacks.
This is even more crucial now as organisational data sprawl continues to expand, and IT teams struggle to keep up with changing data needs. Data protection and management strategies are essential as organisations take a more proactive posture to impending cyberthreats.
The First Step to Data Protection
According to a recent study by Milieu Insights, 78% of employees in Singapore prefer a flexible work arrangement and hybrid schedule. Even as workplace restrictions are lifted here, hybrid work arrangements will continue in many organisations. This trend presents a challenge for data protection, as the data sprawl for many organisations now permanently expand beyond the safe borders of the office.
To manage data security and compliance, organisations must identify the business-critical data, confidential or sensitive information to ensure it is properly secured and protected effectively and consistently. Once identified and secured, this data can then be used for greater insights and important business decisions. Organisations should step up on their data protection to ensure that they can:
● Quickly identify and secure their business-critical and sensitive data
● Minimise data sprawl and the threat of ransomware
● Centrally manage data across cloud, on-premises, and multi-cloud environments
● Mitigate risk remediations with collaborative decision making
● Expedite data recovery and applications with pre-set priorities
Proactive Data Management
Organisations must also keep pace as the amount of data they create and store swells. Not only must they have an effective data management strategy – they will also need to adopt the right data management platform. A single platform that is simple and unified across hybrid workloads goes a long way to minimise risk and accelerate growth.
By unifying a data management platform to store, protect, use and optimise their data, organisations can manage the business-critical or sensitive data in the most efficient and cost-effective way. This includes proactive remediation actions that backups, archives or secures data, as well as ensure data availability in times of crisis. This way, organisations can lower the available data attack surface and reduce the risks of ransomware.
This platform would also preserve data quality and data governance, which will let them gain valuable data insights, identify sensitive data risks, streamline collaborative decision-making remediations, and support regulatory compliance.
Recovery Ready for What Comes
The ultimate test of a data management strategy is crisis – such as in the case of a ransomware attack. 75% of IT organisations will face one or more ransomware attacks according to Gartner, and such attacks present a ticking clock. With critical business data possibly rendered inaccessible or held for ransom, it is essential to have a plan on how to respond and recover.
An evolving backup and data management strategy must be part of this plan, such as a trusted and protected copy of backup data that can be restored quickly to allow operations to quickly resume. This is where proactive remediation is crucial to ensure this backup data copy is on hand. Additionally, a layered security approach encompassing multiple security tools, resources, controls and best practices is necessary. These security controls applied within and around the data protection infrastructure will ensure any backup data is secured and recoverable.
Backup copies are crucial as they circumvent the need to pay ransom for business-critical data. Organisations in the Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region tend to pay ransom for data held hostage according to IDC, and a backup data copy makes it possible to avoid this difficult decision. Additionally, paying cybercriminals to restore data is not a data protection strategy – and it also does not guarantee that the ransomed data will be safely restored.
Instead, Intelligent Data Management is the best defence for organisations to reduce risks and minimise the effects of ransomware. In the face of rising threats, these steps provide the confidence that when an attack does occur, essential data is not only protected but recoverable, and the organisation is more than ready for the worst-case scenario.
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