It’s a new year. Like many of you, on New Year’s Eve, I gathered with friends and family in the countdown to midnight and joined people in singing, “Should Auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind.”
Well, if you want to forget about your old acquaintances, that’s your choice. But here’s something you cannot forget and better keep top of mind in 2020: your data. Data is the most valuable asset any company has – no matter what size or industry. The reality of data today is this: your data can only deliver on its value if it is well-protected.
On any given day, somewhere in the world, a company is being attacked and its data is being held hostage for ransom. It’s not just huge companies that are impacted – ransomware is now targeting smaller organizations, including cities, municipalities and other organizations. This trend is unfortunately going to continue, as many of these agencies are challenged with inadequate funding to add resources or update software.
One Commvaults own customers, City of Sparks, in Nevada, was a survivor of a ransomware attack. Once it happened, Commvault was there to quickly recover its data from the offensive.
Because the city had backed up its data from physical and virtual servers, it was able to restore its data in 12 hours, rather than weeks. Since Commvault provides a single integrated data recovery solution, customers can recover very quickly and maintain business continuity.
Commvault’s mission is to help our customers be data ready, compliance ready and recovery ready. Logic built into the Commvault platform keeps track of typical data activity and behavior. Data monitoring provides insights, which become critical to detecting a ransomware attack in the first place. If we see unusual spikes or anomalies, we alert the customer to potentially dangerous situations. With Commvault software, workflows automate complex recovery processes, including compliance practices, while providing customers with detailed insights along the way.
The ability to recover data will continue to improve and evolve. Unfortunately, so will ransomware attacks. The problem will most likely never go away.
So do what you can to protect your data – reduce your exposure to threats and proactively respond to hostile actions. But also be sure you are able to recover your data quickly when it is compromised. Do you have offsite backup? Different levels of protection? Multiple and stable copies? Can you recover across the platform and across the cloud?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, may I suggest your New Year’s resolution should be to check out Commvault, and see how we can help keep your data always in mind.
Article by Rangaraaj Rajagopalan, Commvault’s Vice President, Product Management.
