Data is more critical than ever, and so is its protection

There have been few organizational priorities of more importance than business resilience in 2020. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic that completely upended carefully thought out annual plans and initiatives, COVID-19 has forced organizations to re-evaluate priorities and focus resources on solutions that empower their organization’s continued success.

Cloud migration initiatives have been key activities with multi-year deployment plans, but in 2020 it catapulted to the top of the list as IT leaders and executives sought to shift business models overnight, enable a remote workforce, and maintain high levels of productivity without sacrificing security. New applications and collaboration tools have been launched expeditiously to meet employee needs, but unfortunately, not every business takes the time to ensure new applications and workloads are fully protected against the inevitable – user errors, unexpected data loss, and potentially malicious actors.

Druva saw first-hand the value of data rise as organizations sought to enhance security and management for data being created, stored and shared in more places and ways than ever before. With this understanding, we sought to measure the pulse of global IT leaders through our inaugural 2020 Value of Data survey. 

Based on responses from more than 700 IT leaders across the United States and the United Kingdom, this year’s report offers a glimpse into the unprecedented challenges businesses are facing – the growing reliance on data, and the need for comprehensive data protection to speed digital transformation and ensure business resiliency. The following are key takeaways and trends we observed from the survey response data. These findings are just a sample of the insights uncovered in the report, and we look forward to sharing even more insights soon! 

The stakes of data protection have been raised in the era of COVID-19. 

73% of respondents are more concerned now with protecting their organizational data from ransomware than they were before the pandemic.

As a result of COVID-19, more SaaS applications are being deployed, multi-year processes are being condensed into months, and employee onboarding is taking place remotely. With data being created, stored, and shared in more ways than ever before, there are new security challenges every company is navigating as they try to empower a workforce while maintaining a strong security posture. 

Adding to the pressure of this year, internal and external threats are on the rise. 

Respondents reported an increase in data outages (43%), human error tampering data (40%), phishing attacks (28%), malware attacks (25%), and ransomware attacks (18%) since the pandemic began.

The increased use of private and public cloud increases data usability and accessibility, but also requires a unique shared responsibility for data protection and security. While cloud service providers ensure availability of their infrastructure, users are responsible for maintaining their data. Without a comprehensive data protection solution in place, organizations rapidly shifting to cloud may be at risk of malicious attacks and accidental deletions.

Digital transformation plans on steroids. 

According to 68% of respondents, these initiatives accelerated between 1-5 years in 2020. Meanwhile, 82% of respondents have seen value from initial digital transformation efforts, but say they “still have a ways to go.” Access to data is now the number two obstacle to implementing digital transformation successfully, after budget/finances.

A cloud migration is only as successful as a company’s ability to offload data from traditional data centers, and leverage the cloud’s ability to scale on demand for changing workload needs. Breaking down data silos and strategically moving workloads to the cloud allows companies to  realize the benefits of a cloud-based model and lay the foundation for future migrations. Data protection is an ideal workload for the cloud, given its infrequent, yet high resource demands. For workloads such as these, which do not need to run 24/7, customers can dramatically lower costs and consolidate various processes.

Optimizing customer experiences remains the number one priority for data. 

70% of respondents are confident in their abilities to maximize the value of data. However, organizations struggle with access, as 41% say the data they collect is not readily available when needed for decision making. Nearly half (47%) of respondents say their organization can only go up to four hours without access to data before causing serious harm to their business. 

The creation of data silos, and the resulting inaccessibility to all data on demand limits an organization’s agility and ability to quickly respond to changing demands. By offering a platform that offers a single pane of glass and is able to consolidate data from data centers, SaaS applications and endpoints, customers have a complete data set that is available and accessible at any moment, from anywhere in the world. 

The bottom line: successful data management leads to competitive advantage.

Understanding the risks of business operation without access to data, 79% of respondents see data management and protection as a competitive business advantage.

Druva offers a leading SaaS solution to protect and manage enterprise backup across data center, cloud, and endpoint workloads. Built on AWS, the Druva Cloud Platform is infinitely scalable and on-demand to meet your business needs, providing your team the confidence to realize and meet the expectations of a more agile market. 

Download the Druva Cloud Platform solution brief to learn more, and register for DxP, the industry’s first cloud data protection summit for IT professionals. The event, hosted by Druva, kicks off tomorrow, but there is still time to register and discover how to unlock the full potential of your business’s data! We hope to see you there.