Why Cyber Resilience makes your data work for your AI and ML-driven Business

I attended Commvault SHIFT in London on 8th October 2024. This annual in-person and virtual event, combined with a 40-city roadshow, is aimed at CISOs, CIOs, data security, cloud, and data protection professionals who want to know how to achieve “continuous business.” The central idea is that businesses can rapidly rebuild, reconstruct, and recover when they experience an incident. You can register for in-person or virtual attendance at one of the events here .

Why is this topic important? Put, if there is an issue with the data, then there is no business intelligence, no artificial intelligence, and ultimately no business. Businesses run on their data, and without it, you can’t tell who your customers are or whether you have everything in place on your supply chain, for example.

If organisations want AI and Machine Learning, they will need to look after their data and business. This is where cyber resilience comes in. When there is an issue, organisations must respond quickly to restore their data, applications and business. Hence, it is an important topic, so I attended the Commvault SHIFT event to learn more about the latest innovations. Today, more organizations embrace a cloud-first approach where cyber resilience is key. In fact, 73% of all new data will be stored in the cloud, as research shown by BCG shows (Reference ).

The afternoon featured Commvault’s CEO, Sanjay Mirchandani, making headline announcements. The Commvault SHIFT event also featured Chief Product Officer Rajiv Kottomtharayil, Chief Technology and AI Officer Pranay Ahlawat, and a host of other senior team members and special guests. Commvault made several announcements about additions to its cloud-based offerings, including specific enhancements affecting AWS and Google Cloud environments. I’ve posted some highlights below.

Moving to Cyber Resilience

Companies often only consider data properly once there is an issue. At the event, it was good to see a strong focus on the complexities of data management, particularly in the context of cloud migration and AI. Data management is hard, but can you try to run a business without it???

During the event, Commvault CEO Sanjay?Mirchandani and colleagues, customers, and partners discussed the shift from a more narrow data protection approach to broader enterprise cyber resilience, emphasizing the importance of protecting data across various environments, including on-premise, SaaS, and multi-cloud setups. The keynote sessions focused on how Commvault can help, and he highlighted the strategic acquisition of Clumio to enhance its cyber resilience platform.

The discussion also touched on integrating AI and machine learning to improve data recovery and protect AI applications. The theme underscores the importance of continuous business resilience and real-time security in the modern, always-connected data landscape.?

Cloud Rewind, Air Gap Protect and Cleanroom Recovery are fully supported for AWS

Today, more organisations embrace a cloud-first approach, where cyber resilience is vital. This gives organisations more options for building resilience on the secure AWS Cloud. Cyber resiliency is intended to help organisations to meet their regulatory commitments. Commvault’s suite of AWS solutions will be generally available in the coming months. Following availability, joint customers can effortlessly access these solutions in?the AWS Marketplace, using the power of cyber resilience and data protection to make their business and their data work.

AWS remains the leading cloud service provider today. Recognising its indispensable role in many modern IT infrastructures, Commvault has released a range of solutions for AWS customers that offer direct support for AWS environments.

Commvault announced that the Commvault? Cloud cyber resilience platform will be available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support data protection and cyber recovery while getting the business back on its feet with the cloud application rebuild process following a cyberattack. Cloud Rewind protects Amazon S3 data by allowing users to revert to the last clean state.

“We are proud to extend the full power of the Commvault Cloud platform and cloud-native solutions to AWS. We believe our game-changing technology will empower joint customers to recover faster, mitigate threats more effectively, and enhance their cyber resilience strategies.” Pranay Ahlawat, Chief Technology and AI Officer, Commvault.

Through its recent acquisition of Clumio, Commvault will introduce new Cyber Resilience for Amazon S3 technology in the coming months to bring time machine capabilities to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) customers. In the event of an attack, this technology will allow Amazon S3 customers to revert rapidly back to a clean copy of data that has not been infiltrated with malware. At a time when many companies are storing vast datasets in Amazon S3, including AI and ML datasets, this advancement will represent a significant opportunity to further cyber resilience in the AI era.

Cyber Resilience to move forward from running on the spot

Organisations can feel they are running on the spot to keep up with cybersecurity and industry regulations. Ransomware attacks occur once every 11 seconds (IDC Global Datasphere) , so it can often feel overwhelming for people to catch up. Cybersecurity incidents and data thefts are so prevalent that they often only warrant a footnote in the news. Businesses must embrace the zero-trust principle, where no user or system is trusted by default, which is critical in modern cloud environments. Continuous verification, encryption, and the application of least-privileged access are becoming the new standard in cloud-first resilience.

Air Gap Protect is another critical line of defence offering that will provide AWS customers with immutable, isolated copies of data in a Commvault tenant as a service. It complements Commvault’s current capabilities for backup and protection in customer-owned tenants. This new functionality allows AWS customers to keep their data safe and resilient.

Despite the growing public complacency towards cybersecurity, IT leaders must prepare businesses for continuous disruptions while maintaining operations around the clock. Continuous business is more relevant than ever in this 24/7 by 365 world. Companies will need advanced security models and AI-driven threat detection with real-time analytics to combat sophisticated attacks with cybersecurity threats increasing in scale and sophistication. Despite the growing challenges, Gartner research has shown that, by 2025, over 85% of enterprises will assume a cloud-first strategy, but only half will have implemented proper cloud security measures (Reference ).

Commvault were supported by customers who explained how the new releases helped them. For example:

“By utilizing Commvault in our AWS environment, we will be able to greatly enhance our data protection, resiliency, and recovery processes, Commvault’s orchestration capabilities allow us to automate and streamline recovery in the event of a cyberattack and significantly decrease recovery time. Plus, we get the added benefit of having access to Commvault’s SaaS offerings with full support for both cloud and on-premises infrastructure. Our data and recovery environments will be secure, resilient, and prepared to face potential threats, decreasing our risk and enhancing our ability to quickly respond to cyberattacks.” Marek Duranik, Core Infrastructure & Data Storage and Protection Associate Director, Merck.

Moving to the cloud: Buyers' regret?

I recently spoke to a business leader who told me they preferred the technology solution before the organisation moved to the cloud. They felt the IT department provided a better level of service, and it was easier to estimate costs. They preferred to move back to on-premise, but they knew that too much money, time, and investment had gone into the technology move and that this was not an option. Too many people would lose face.

I suspect this perspective is more common than people think, and I appreciate the honesty. It can be challenging to master moving to a new platform. People want convenience, and the cloud can give them convenience and the dopamine hit of spinning up cloud assets. The ease of spinning up a Virtual Machine can mask the wraparound care that the VM needs. It was noted by Commvault’s CEO, Sanjay, that 70% of all IT spend is in the cloud. However, organisations need to think longer-term about resilience.?

One issue is that organisations must rethink their cybersecurity strategies as they become cloud-first. They need to navigate the shift to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and this issue introduces unique challenges. Given the numerous news reports of cybersecurity incidents, there is a sense of helplessness, which means the organisation can inherit complacency from the public perception of these incidents. Further, the assumption that ‘the cloud is cheap’ can result in data sprawl, so organisations can end up with complex security perimeters – and even more estate to look after. These developing trends have redefined how businesses protect their data, focusing on cloud-native security to mitigate these issues.

Although organisations have to rethink their cybersecurity strategies, one advantage the cloud offers is new opportunities for businesses to recover quickly. Commvault announced a new offering that will be available to AWS customers: Cloud Rewind. I have seen situations where IT departments have not implemented Rewind technology, and later wish they had! When organisations have lost production data, the business does not get their reports and dashboards on time, and they will certainly let you know very quickly! In the worst-case scenario, the business teams will know about it before you do. ?

If you are unfamiliar with it, Cloud Rewind acts as an AWS time machine, so organisations “rewind” to recover the last clean copy of their data. Then, they can automate the cloud application rebuild process so businesses can return to normal in minutes versus hours, days, weeks, or months. To read about other new developments with Cloud Rewind, click?here .

Cyber resilience means covering a wider blast zone

There was a very interesting panel session with panellists from Harvard Business Review, Commvault, Pure Storage and NCC Group on compliance, trust and resiliency. The panellists discussed the topic of delivering responsibly and safely. We must consider digital risk, where we see financial, societal and technical impacts. The recent issue over Crowdstrike showed that resilience, or lack of it, has a real impact in so many ways. For example, it impacts organisations financially, operationally, and in a wider scope, such as brand management and supply chain risk. The blast zone for a cyberattack is much larger than it used to be.

Organizations need help to keep up with legal changes, and there will be a constant battle for compliance to catch up with innovation. For example, the AI EU act will no doubt need to be revised after the release of ChatGPT, which changed everything. Good innovation requires good collaboration, which is also key to cyber resiliency because it involves everyone in the organisation. If your organisation has hundreds of cloud services, then it will require information from many different sources to understand the issues and resolve them quickly.

“With Cloud Rewind, Commvault helps organizations quickly recover in the case of a cybersecurity incident, Its resource discovery, dependency mapping, drift analysis, and automated cloud reconstruction capabilities provide much-needed relief for teams to save them from the intricate and time-consuming process of rebuilding their applications. For enterprises managing hundreds of cloud services, this is a huge advantage for minimizing downtime after a breach.” Melinda Marks, Practice Director, Cybersecurity, Enterprise Strategy Group.

The Rise of Hybrid Cloud Security

Enterprises are increasingly adopting hybrid models that combine public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise infrastructure. Adopting hybrid cloud security models integrating public, private, and on-premise infrastructure is becoming increasingly popular. Organisations often move to the cloud to optimise performance, reduce costs, and provide a stable service to their consumers (Reference ). As these systems become more complex, strong security methods are needed to accommodate the complexity and interconnectivity between the private cloud, public cloud, and on-premise.

However, to meet the needs of people and the needs of the data, a range of complexities is required, which involve flexibility, security, and collaboration in managing hybrid cloud environments. For example, business users often complain about having different logins for different systems. Cloud models offer centralised Identity and Access Management (IAM ) to streamline access controls while reducing the risk of unauthorised access. Businesses need increased collaboration between teams to function effectively, resulting in the need for these technologies and business challenges for operations. As the world increasingly adopts automation, IT leaders will need to consider data if developers automate the management of their hybrid environments because it can sometimes be forgotten. For example, there are different mechanisms for securing data at rest and in transit, and organisations can sometimes miss one. Further, these mechanisms need to work across all cloud environments, adding another layer of complexity.

What does this mean for AI and Machine Learning?

AI and Machine Learning are nothing without data. Additionally, AI and machine learning are essential tools for detecting threats early and responding quickly. As cyberattacks increase in speed and complexity, AI becomes another tool to support organisations, from the automated initial incident response at the start to predictive threat modelling at the other end.

Cyber resilience in the era of cloud-first business involves building robust systems, including AI and machine learning adoption and innovating in hybrid platforms. Due to the skill sets required in solid systems, collaboration and customer empowerment will be necessary. To do this also means creating a culture where the overall business prioritises cybersecurity at the start of every project as part of a collaborative exercise throughout the organisation. Rather than relying on fragmented solutions, organisations need an integrated, SaaS-based platform that centralises cybersecurity operations. Organisations need real-time visibility across cloud and on-prem infrastructures, preferably in a one-stop-shop approach to make it easy and convenient for professionals to review and act upon. Organisations need to act quickly when an incident is potentially occurring, and this will involve data management and cybersecurity. It is also important to build resilience to prevent issues as far as possible, cultivating relationships with partners that complement your cloud strategy.

As ransomware continues to be a major threat, businesses must develop a ransomware-readiness strategy. This strategy will have many facets, including frequent backup validation—after all, you are only as good as your last restore! It also means leveraging AI-powered analytics to detect abnormal patterns before attacks escalate. Ideally, this should happen before the organisation suffers an incident—not afterwards!

Anticipating the Next Era of Modern Compliance

New global mandates like DORA, NIS2, and SOCI are coming into play, and these frameworks demand higher levels of transparency, responsibility, and resilience. The DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) targets financial institutions. It focuses on ensuring operational resilience and aims to strengthen cyber risk management. The NIS2 (Network and Information Systems Directive) expands the scope of cybersecurity requirements to a broader set of sectors and includes managed service providers. Whilst NIS2 does not directly apply to UK businesses, the changes coming into force this month (October 2024) could place higher accountability on organisations. In addition, the SOCI (Security of Critical Infrastructure Act) specifies that businesses must increase their resiliency and transparency in responding to cyber incidents if they operate in key sectors, such as energy, water, and transport.

With the introduction of new compliance frameworks, there is an emphasis on the importance of cyber resilience businesses to build compliance into their core operations. The need for automated compliance checks, real-time reporting, and cross-enterprise transparency will become standard practices. It is an ongoing challenge for global businesses to rethink how they handle data protection and compliance across their supply chains.?

Cloud-First Resilience Your Competitive Advantage

In today’s cloud-first technology landscape, businesses must prioritise cloud-first resilience. Embedding resilience into your architecture enables seamless operations, cybersecurity, and innovation. This approach builds customer trust and fosters greater loyalty by ensuring data security.

Next Steps

CommvaultSHIFT 2024 was action-packed and energetic, and the afternoon flew by! It was fast-paced, and it was good to have punchy demos and slots to highlight and reiterate the main points on cyber resilience and continuous business.

At the Commvault event, the team shared how to achieve continuous business in your organisation by examining advanced strategies and solutions safeguarding the enterprise. The event is aimed at IT leaders to meet the business’s mandate to protect critical assets while ensuring seamless business operations. From strengthening cloud-first resilience to navigating the ever-changing compliance landscape, attendees will gain actionable insights to fortify their business against today’s and tomorrow’s threats – regardless of any complacency within the business teams. You can register for one of the Commvault in-person or virtual attendance at one of the events here .