3 Ways Cyber Resiliency Fuels Continuous Business
It was about ten years ago or so when I first worked with Commvault as I led the consulting team at Adobe. I remember thinking its name sounded both old and new: a cross section of the massive bank vaults featured in black and white movies and the wicked fast data exchanged in a connected world.?
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The world has changed since then.?
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Today, there are 17 categories of cybersecurity (and more on the horizon, I am sure!), leaving customers overwhelmed about choosing cybersecurity solutions and companies. Every time you add an endpoint or user, risk escalates. In the meantime, cybercriminals are getting smarter and faster.?
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On the good side, Commvault is now a leading provider of cyber resilience and data protection solutions for the hybrid cloud – and I am once again reunited with them after seeing them at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference.?
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Just as I observed years ago, Commvault does not accept business-as-usual, but instead architects the future of business. Gartner named Commvault a Leader for the 13th consecutive time in Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Solutions. This recognition is based on their Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.?
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After attending Shift, its signature industry event, the buzz is real around Commvault’s core belief in continuous business, a concept that has long been the carrot on the stick for many enterprise companies.
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The Mandatory Pursuit of Continuous Business
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In his keynote address, Commvault CEO Sanjay Mirchandani defined continuous business as a “a whole new state of always-on availability and resilience.” There are four parts: continuous security, continuous rebalance, continuous readiness, continuous recovery. He talks passionately about issues you don’t always hear in cybersecurity conversations.?
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Imagine withstanding anything, from cyberattacks to power outages, with minimal downtime, fast recovery and uninterrupted operations. Imagine knowing that before a crisis strikes, you’ll be . . . just fine (cue the gasps).?
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Embedding cybersecurity into your workflow is what continuous business is all about.
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Have we reached a pivot moment when it’s possible to hold our heads high after a cyber-attack? That’s an important shift that Mirchandani alludes to when he says, ”. . . every assumption we’ve had for decades has been kind of turned on its head with today’s loosely coupled cloud-first approach. In response, we’re seamlessly enabling resilience across all your clouds, all your environments, regions, accounts, applications and workloads. Folks, welcome to Commvault Cloud.”
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So, what does continuous business look like? Mirchandani breaks it down into three fundamental principles:?
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Fundamental Principle #1: Own Your Cloud
Here, it’s all about taking responsibility for your cloud – whether you run the “underpinnings” of it or not, says Mirchandani. “While no two environments are the same, owning its resilience in its entirety is paramount. It’s your environment. You have the right to scale it, shrink it, manage it and secure it in any way you want. And guess what? You can change your mind along the way.” He adds that if your business is in the cloud, then CLOUD is in your business.
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Fundamental Principle #2: Embrace Multi-Cloud
Multi-cloud has been around for about 10 years, making it a universal fixture for enterprise companies needing flexibility, diversity, portability and scalability without relying on any one data vendor. Mirchandani points out it allows for new workloads and new users without sacrificing efficiency or performance. No doubt he’s right when he says multi-cloud has many moving parts, which is why he says a resilient platform requires built-in security and should support cloud native and SaaS applications. The new Commvault Cloud not only supports the most clouds and workloads but extends its capabilities onto Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.?
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Fundamental Principle #3: One Size Doesn’t Fit All?
Protecting virtual machines is different from protecting cloud-native apps, Mirchandani says. Protecting and rebuilding cloud application configurations differs from ensuring SFDC or Microsoft Dynamics Data. “Protecting and recovering cloud scale generative AI apps with billions of objects is nothing like a traditional relational database,” he says.?
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Mirchandani defines resiliency as the ability to confidently recover, predictability – and peace of mind when you own your own cloud. When you regularly and rigorously test your resilience across your entire spectrum of clouds, apps and workloads, he says, you will truly be ready.
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Resiliency: a Shift in Mindset
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Thirteenth century poet Rumi wrote: “Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world.” In short, actions start with a thought. One major event that got a lot of CIOs thinking is the CloudStrike incident, which impacted business on a massive scale. flights grounded, 8.5 million operating systems affected and 5.4 billion in direct losses .
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Know the threat landscape assessment – or you will miss something. That shift in mindset – from reactive to proactive – regarding business operations is required by IT, C-suite, board of directors, mid-level managers and employees. A security-first culture has security solutions embedded into a company’s workflows. I anticipate there will be more AI-powered attacks and more vulnerabilities to account for.
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What can organizations do to stay resilient? Here’s a quick-hit list:
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At Shift, Commvault’s first-ever appointed Chief Tech and AI Officer Pranay Ahlawat put a big number up on the screen that makes the case for pursuing cyber resiliency. It is the size of the cloud market: $50 billion. He predicts a 20% annual rate of growth. That’s $1 trillion in the next four to five years.
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The growth of cloud, he said, demands a new strategy for backup, adding, “This isn’t just a sign of cloud growth, but a fundamental shift in how businesses are running their IT operations.”?
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Where is this robust growth coming from? Ahlawat says next generation workloads, the rise of GenAI, an escalation of industry specific workloads, and the rapid expansion of IoT.?
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The future of technology loves the cloud because digital innovation demands scalability, flexibility and real-time processing.
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Full-Circle: Shifting from Continuous Threats to Continuous Business
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Attending Shift was great, but hosting Michael Fasulo , senior director of product management and 20-year veteran at Commvault , as a guest on CXO Spice was even better. He shared that “anticipating threats is where the journey starts.” Tools like Commvault risk analysis, and it discovers and classifies sensitive data across on-prem and cloud both on primary and backup data. Once data is classified it provides a rich set of remediation capabilities to move, delete,?archive, tag and even redact. ?
He says customers are concerned about flexibility in choice, adaptability of the platform and moving between silos without compromise or tradeoffs.
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Commvault takes a layered approach to cybersecurity. It’s a holistic, platform philosophy. That’s a word they use: “philosophy.” Fasulo describes it as an understanding where zero trust comes in, hardening solutions, strengthening the core platform, offering immutability and making sure data is safe and accessible for full business recovery and continuity.?
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A Sneak Peek into Next Gen Commvault
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Commvault’s solutions mitigate threats, recover predictably and future-proof enterprises all in the name of continuous business. It’s hard to imagine what is on the other side for such an innovator when they’ve already broken away from the pack, but I asked Fasulo what’s next – and he did not disappoint.
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Clean room recovery, he says, hits some major pain points in the market and “provides a safe and isolated environment for people to test recoveries without disrupting production systems . . . it empowers organizations to validate their strategies.” Use cases might include testing and forensics. The industry term for the quantum piece is "harvest now, decrypt later". ?This is where folks have long term sensitive data that if it's exhilarated today and stored, to be decrypted at some future point it would be problematic. ? Think of this scenario ?as a credit card number or a frequently rotated password, that if it's stolen today and decrypted tomorrow it's not a problem, BUT ?if these are trade secrets? or government intelligence that data is sensitive for years or decades, ?this type of data need next level protection, which is where post quantum cryptography comes into play.?
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Customers are looking to simplify steps and leverage platforms that make it simple to rehost or refactor workloads into the platform. Getting there isn’t easy. Shifting from best of breed to best of platform, Fasulo says, is the winning formula.
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Commvault has a deep history of doing that kind of work. It is now helping to shift the future workplace toward intentional business continuity. It’s all about keeping the wheels of business moving forward.
Marketing Manager / Client Success
1 个月Fantastic post. Thoughtful as well. Thanks for posting this.
Medical Scientist
1 个月Helen Yu Africa needs to understand this
Sales Consultant at NexEra Sales & IT Solutions Limited| I help businesses and sales teams achieve their revenue goals and maximize their market potential with proven sales strategies
1 个月Great insight, Commvault's focus on cybersecurity underscores the need for proactive data protection strategies.
Professional Editor & Writer | Freelance Contributor at PRWords.com | Digital Marketer | Crafting Engaging Content for Brands & Executives |
1 个月Helen Yu, This is a powerful vision for the future of cyber resilience! Embracing a proactive approach to security is essential in today’s digital landscape!
Elevating C-Suites And Business Owners To Peak Performance Through Tailored Wellness Programs Designed To Fit Your Lifestyle And Goals I Take Charge Of Your Health In Just 90 Days I Certified Health & Wellness Coach
1 个月Peace of mind in the cloud with continuous business and cyber resilience. Helen Yu