As we pour our champagne and count down towards a new year, it’s time to plan for 2016 and the changes we’re sure to experience. With 2015 having come to a close, it is important that we define our expectations for 2016 as a year of technological advancement and innovation.
Disaster recovery will be on everyone’s minds in the New Year. Companies big and small will need to invest the time and due diligence necessary to build out solid business continuity plans. That’s the key to avoiding costly and debilitating data loss in 2016.
When it comes to disaster recovery in the New Year, we predict businesses will:
Brace for potential data loss
Dangers to businesses’ physical and virtual locations abound, from natural disasters to insider threats. While hot technology trends like mobile, social and cloud offer greater efficiencies, they also open up businesses to new security risks. Though businesses are investing in stronger security postures, many can’t keep pace with the growing threat landscape. A recent survey of 160 IT professionals from online IT community Spiceworks reveals that 48 percent of respondents reported losing data in 2014 alone. In an IDC (News - Alert) survey of more than 700 worldwide small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs,) 80 percent reported experiencing downtime.
“Disasters” that cause data loss come in many forms and can have a terrible effect on a business’ bottom line. More businesses are aware of this fact that ever before. That’s why we predict that most organizations will gird for disaster in 2016. Remember, it’s not a matter of if a data loss event will occur, it’s when. As they brace for potential data loss, it is vital that companies ensure business continuity systems are in place and prepared to protect important data.
Come Around to Cloud
As companies continue to prioritize data protection and recovery, cloud backup services are gaining traction for their scalability, reliability and affordability. In the past, some businesses have been reluctant to store critical data in the cloud, citing security and privacy concerns. But that’s changing fast. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated encryption and locked-down data transfer capabilities, cloud services are quickly dispelling common misperceptions about security.
Additionally, businesses will become smarter about the cloud vendors they work with, choosing those with solutions that incorporate the latest in encryption technology, centralized management for advanced authentication policies and strong internal policies to ensure employees themselves don’t become a point of vulnerability.
Hang Their Hats on Hybrid
Companies concerned with business continuity will begin to leverage the cloud as an essential offsite data storage solution. As cloud takes off, we foresee a greater trend toward hybrid deployment models for holistic data protection. The same Spiceworks (News - Alert) survey reveals that 54 percent of small business IT professionals are already using a hybrid approach that consists of a local backup – such as a network attached storage (NAS) device – as well as an offsite backup in the cloud. More businesses will adopt the “3-2-1” rule, ensuring that three copies of there are stored in at least two different locations, one of which is offsite. This will be the best way to ensure continuous business operations in the case of any security or data loss incident.
From the largest enterprises to the smallest startups, all businesses rely on data as the lifeblood of their organizations. This trend will continue to grow into 2016. As a result, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions will continue to grow in necessity and importance in 2016.
David Raissipour is Carbonite’s Senior Vice President of Engineering. Carbonite provides small-to-midsize businesses with comprehensive disaster recovery solutions, including data backup, recovery, archiving and more. Learn how Carbonite can protect your critical business data from disaster at Carbonite.com.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson
