Data-Driven Businesses Are Built on Strong Data Management Foundations

When building a home, a construction team starts with the foundation and works its way up. The foundation must be strong, able to weather storms and support the weight of the home being built on top without cracking. When foundations crack, a whole host of problems can ensue, including the collapse of the structure it no longer properly supports.

In the digital economy where data drives business, a faulty data management strategy can lead to disaster. Data-driven businesses need to be built on a strong data management infrastructure that ensures their data is resilient, able to withstand any storm — whether real or cyber — and be able to support and scale for the business that depends on it.

If an enterprise is not prepared to manage and protect their data in a resilient manner, they are effectively putting their business at risk which manifests in two crucial ways: financial impact (both short- and long-term) and loss of competitive advantage.

Building a robust data management strategy

Companies that still back up on-premises using legacy architectures face backup gaps due to latency, human error or slow recoveries, yet moving applications to the cloud without a corresponding backup plan fragments your data and increases vulnerability. The average cost of an enterprise-level data breach is estimated at over $150M. This high cost is due to the growing level of digitalization, data fragmentation and connectivity across organizations.

The cloud was built to safely and affordably store data. Public cloud IaaS workloads suffer at least 60 percent fewer security incidents than those in traditional data centers. With data growing exponentially, cloud data management is a necessary economic reality for most businesses.

Enterprise users may already think they are backing up their data securely and effectively, or maybe they aren't convinced they need to back it up at all because they have purchased cloud-based applications, assuming they come with backup.

A crack in the data foundation

The reality is that 69 percent of organizations incorrectly believe data protection, privacy and compliance are the responsibility of their cloud provider. Of those organizations, 52 percent had a malware-related security breach, while 16 percent of survey respondents say their companies lost intellectual property or confidential data as the result of a data breach. Statistically speaking, you are going to be breached; it's up to your organization to prepare for a quick recovery.

Companies must ensure data is protected from disaster events such as cyber threats (including malware and ransomware), internal threats such as human error and outside threats such as natural disasters. A survey shows 94 percent of companies that suffer from a catastrophic data loss do not survive — 43 percent never reopen and 51 percent close within two years.

A crack in an organization's data foundation can be exploited by threat actors. Weaknesses left unpatched and legacy technology are cracks that are easily targeted. Threat intelligence reveals that around 19 percent of exploited vulnerabilities mentioned on the dark web in 2018 were preying on older, unpatched technology.

Once an exploitable crack is found, it does not take long for a breach to take place. The time from a threat actor's first action in a breach event chain to the initial compromise of an asset is measured in minutes, while the time to breach discovery is likely weeks or months (on average, 206 days to detection).

Having a data management platform that adheres to the highest security standards and ensures that data is protected and resilient is crucial.

The enduring strength of an immutable cloud management platform

Organizations turn to immutable cloud management platforms to augment their cyber defense and to minimize data loss in the event of a failure or ransomware attack. An  immutable cloud management platform cannot be changed once deployed. When modifications are made, they are made on top of the immutable infrastructure but without altering the original. Therefore, if your data is maliciously altered or modified in any way, it is quick to recover from a point before modification.

You want your organization to benefit from the multitude of benefits that the cloud offers. But facing digital transformation can feel overwhelming. It doesn't have to be if you choose the right cloud data management platform for your foundation. A modern cloud back-up platform ensures data and cyber resiliency, as well as a host of other benefits like automation.

Rubrik's approach enables a continuous stream of recovery points to minimize data loss in the event of a failure or ransomware attack. Enable near-zero RPOs with single-click CDP and minimize ransomware-related downtime with Rubrik Radar and Instant Recovery. To learn more about what you should expect from your backup provider and how to modernize your backup in the Azure Cloud, download this infographic.