Point solutions increase complexities of data backup

As organizations are struggling to figure out what to do with the data they have, a recent study by Symantec shows that 50 percent of the IT professionals can’t meet service level agreements (SLA) due to too much data. Organizations often end up investing on multiple backup tools for physical and virtual machines, which adds to the complexities further.

Tarun Kaura, director-Technology Sales, India, Symantec explains how a holistic approach can help organizations overcome some of the complex back up and data protection challenges.

CIOL: How organizations can safeguard themselves from some of the common recovery challenges? What about the SLA?

Tarun Kaura: Organizations have increased service level agreements, rising expectations of availability and the need to run in a 24/7 business model. They need a holistic backup and recovery solution that is optimized for any workload, whether physical, virtual, arrays, or big data, and delivers truly flexible target storage option.

But, there are many challenges and considerations associated with building, implementing, and supporting any backup solution. These challenges often lead to delayed projects, overspent budgets and failures.

Individual point solutions for target deduplication and virtual machine backup have only added to the complexity.  A simple appliance based approach can reduce complexity, cost and associated risks by unifying the approach towards virtual and physical environments.

CIOL: Symantec has posted robust revenue growth from backup appliances and data loss prevention businesses in the last two quarters. How do you plan to sustain the growth in the coming quarters as well?

TK: The growth from our backup and data loss prevention businesses is a demonstration of our product superiority and the trust of customers. Incorporating our customers’ and partner’s feedback on the product and having more than 2 million Backup Exec customers worldwide, we are well-positioned to take a leap ahead in the backup and recovery market in India.

Most recently we launched the Backup Exec 2014 in India that delivers powerful, flexible and easy-to-use backup and recovery solutions to protect virtual, physical and hybrid infrastructures- this will help us further realize our goals. Additionally, Symantec’s NetBackup (7.6) solution that was introduced earlier this year brings new functionality to protect the largest scale VMware-based environments as enterprises move to a software-defined data center architecture. With this, we are well-equipped with robust and comprehensive backup and DLP offerings to help sustain the growth.

CIOL: Could you please share the technology roadmap for some of the upcoming security products?

TK: Symantec outlines its product roadmap aligning the customers’ needs and creating future-ready Information Security and Management solutions.

Symantec has recently announced an entirely new approach to Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) that will be supported by two new offerings, Symantec Managed Security Services - Advanced Threat Protection (MSS-ATP) and Symantec Advanced Threat Protection Solution, which correlate alerts and intelligence across a range of security technologies to deliver more comprehensive attack prevention.

Symantec has also announced an enhanced enterprise mobility management solution that allows enterprises to confidently embrace the mobile workforce. This  will help enterprises with secure access to mobile apps, content and devices, as well as enforcement capabilities to manage access, policies, encryption and data loss prevention.

CIOL: BYOD, social and cloud have also changed the enterprise environment over the last couple of years. Could you please share some data protection best practices in this context?

TK: Emerging technologies such as Cloud, Mobility, Virtualization, Big Data, Social Media to name a few, are disruptive forces that are radically changing enterprise technology today. The combination of these have triggered an explosion of data created, shared, and managed by enterprises.

As IT infrastructure becomes more complex and information is dispersed across devices, apps, and locations: physical, virtual and cloud, attackers also have new avenues and gaps to exploit. As per the Norton Report 2013, 29 percent individuals in India and 24 percent across the world are already practicing this trend and also becoming an easy target for cyber criminals to penetrate these data-rich cloud platforms for profitable motives.

Some of the best practices that can protect organizations from cyber-attacks are:

Know your data: Protection must focus on the information - not the device or data center. Understand where your sensitive data resides and where it is flowing to help identify the best policies and procedures to protect it.

Educate employees: Provide guidance on information protection, including company policies and procedures for protecting sensitive data on personal and corporate devices.

Implement a strong security posture: Strengthen your security infrastructure with data loss prevention, network security, endpoint security, encryption, strong authentication and defensive measures, including reputation-based technologies. Therefore, organizations need a holistic IT security framework across all control points working together, with incident response capabilities and global information intelligence and to beat the bad guys. With the new Advanced Threat Protection products, Symantec is bringing this powerful arsenal to market.