Month: February 2023

Given the unprecedented situation that we are in, business organisations need to develop strategies that help them stay afloat and become resilient. While some businesses require out-of-the-box thinking, for others, it’s just about moving on from the conventional, legacy approach and adopting cost-effective solutions or services to address all types of their business needs.

We are aware that the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the entire paradigm of work. Remote working is now the norm than the exception. However, one critical challenge in the remote working scenario is backing up data on remote laptops and desktops. Given the increased threat scenario and the huge number of ransomware attacks, enterprises must have a robust and cost-effective strategy to backup data in the case of an unexpected crisis.

In many cases, enterprises do not test their backups regularly and find to their surprise that they cannot restore their data entirely in case of a hardware failure or a ransomware or malware attack. As a result, bad backups are common in the enterprise. One common reason for a backup failure is that the backup device has errors. In some cases, the entire data is not backed up; while sometimes, it is a plain human error, as many backup administrators miss essential alerts and do not act quickly if a backup fails in one of the servers.

If recovery logs are not sized properly, the transactions are not recorded when the recovery log reaches a specific capacity. Even for SaaS-based applications, there are chances of failure, and that’s why most SaaS service providers recommend their users to backup their content and data using third-party services or applications. No business must be held back by legacy IT or outdated data backup solutions in the digital age.

The need for an automated endpoint backup as a service

Today, critical business information is being created and stored on employees endpoint. With more users working remotely, there is a need for a solution that seamlessly schedules and backs up users’ data without their intervention. An endpoint backup as a service is perfect for the remote workforce era. It enables enterprises and users to quickly backup their laptop or desktop data without impacting any user productivity.

All it requires is a small backup agent that is installed on every remote device. Production data is processed by the backup agent software on remote devices and backed up through a data manager to cloud storage. A centralised server tracks all data management activity. End-users can access protected data using web browsers on any device.

An endpoint backup as a service must be considered a vital part of any business continuity or disaster recovery solution. By protecting end user data, enterprises can ensure that their remote data is protected and can be recovered in the case of any eventuality.

Some of the key benefits of an endpoint backup as a service include:

• Ability to restore data quickly: Enterprises and users can quickly restore their data from any browser-enabled device, as data of every machine is backed up. The self-service capability enables users to restore data on their own without any IT support. It also gives administrators the capability to restore data from a remote location.
• Increased security and data compliance: Enterprise backup as a service give enterprises the capability to improve security with key features such as zero-trust authentication, at-rest or in-flight data encryption and adherence to regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, GDPDR or ISO 27001. Administrators can also use the remote wipe functionality if the device is stolen, ensuring that no one can access sensitive data.
• Reduced burden on IT teams: Enterprise backup and recovery solution as specialised managed service players typically deliver a service. It automatically reduces the burden on IT staff tasked with monitoring and taking backups for remote devices.
• Legal compliance: From a legal point of view, sometimes data must be retained for corporate litigation, internal investigation, audit, or compliance. An enterprise backup solution simplifies this process for enterprises to search and restore information from backup archives.
• Reduced TCO: As the services are delivered using a pay-per-use model, it reduces the TCO wherein enterprises can save costs using an operating expenses (OPEX) model vis-à-vis the capital expenditure model (CAPEX). In addition, features such as de-duplication can help enterprises save bandwidth and storage-related costs.

In summary, endpoint backup as a service can safeguard your organisation data, offering IT Teams peace of mind.

Source: https://www.expresscomputer.in/columns/why-is-endpoint-backup-and-recovery-critical-for-the-remote-workforce-era/77712/

As businesses continue to operate in a highly distributed and complex ecosystem, with remote workforce and data no longer confined to office desktops, organisations need to revamp their data backup and recovery practices to align with the new business environment.

Businesses have entered a new work environment, also widely known as the ‘new normal’. While we have seen organisations ramping up their digitalisation efforts to ensure business continuity, the focus is now on realigning enterprise-wide digital practices with the new normal. Data has, unarguably, taken the center stage as most business processes, customer engagements, collaboration, and much has gone digital, thereby generating, processing and consuming a lot more data than ever before. It can also be said that in this remote environment, everything and everyone is connected by data. Hence, it becomes imperative to ensure that data is always at your disposal.

With the new normal comes new challenges, and one of these critical challenges around data is backup and recovery. Due to continuous digitisation and the pandemic-driven acceleration, data is being generated and stored at multiple points. Unlike traditional setups wherein data resided on-premise, and the IT team looked after backup and recovery, an organisation’s IT ecosystem now consists of numerous elements such as multi-cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), Edge computing and much more. This complex ecosystem requires data to be available to each of these elements at all times. Hence, organisations are now faced with the need to realign their data backup and recovery strategy with today’s business ecosystem.

Additionally, cybercriminals’ target has now shifted to homes rather than offices. As employees continue to work from home and generate data, these are easy targets for ransomware and other malicious attacks. Then there are common challenges of hardware down, storage devices crash, lost laptop and others. IT teams need to be at the top of the situation, rather than waiting for the disaster to knock on the doors. Below, I have outlined a few of the things that the IT teams should consider for a peaceful night sleep.

• Having an Endpoint-centric approach: The shift to a remote workforce is one of the biggest impacts of the pandemic, which has resulted in the growth of endpoint devices and locations. Although enterprises have made big leaps in cloud adoption in recent times, managing data on employees’ endpoint devices from remote locations remains a major challenge. With data no longer residing on-premise and organisations having little or no control over the network and devices used by employees, they need to think beyond office desktops and evolve their data backup, and recovery approach from being perimeter focused to endpoints centric.
• Ransomware-aware means Ransomware-protected: The threat of ransomware has been looming large, even more so in a remotely connected world. According to an IDC survey, about one third of organisations globally have experienced a ransomware attack or breach incident that blocked access to systems or data in the previous 12 months. Due to their vulnerability, endpoint devices could become easy prey to ransomware attacks. While enterprises invest in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions to mitigate such threats, it is also imperative to have a ransomware-aware data backup and recovery solution that can detect anomalies and help secure endpoint data.
• Automating backups in remote environment: Managing data on employee laptops without physical access has been a challenge for IT teams across organisations. Furthermore, owing to the increased number of endpoint devices, manually managing backups could cost significant time and efforts. To streamline this process, organisations need an automated backup solution that provides visibility into all remote devices from a single pane of glass and seamlessly performs scheduled backup and operations without any manual intervention by the user or IT team.
• Geo-location and remote-wipe capabilities: In a distributed environment, gaining visibility and control of endpoint devices is key. As laptops are no longer within the boundaries of office, they are more susceptible to physical threats along with cyber-attacks. In such a scenario, an organisation’s IT team must be equipped with a backup and recovery solution that enables them to geo-locate, encrypt, and remotely wipe data on devices in case of loss or theft and prevent data misuse.
• Empowering employees with self-service capabilities: Gone are the days when the IT team could be reached from across the office desk for any support. Moreover, as the organisation’s IT needs change dynamically with business growth, IT teams must focus on business-critical applications. In line with this objective, organisations would be required to empower their distributed workforce with the ability to restore data quickly without IT desk support.

The remote workforce will continue to remain a key component of the new normal, and organisations will continue to evolve in their digital journey. In this constant endeavour of digitalisation, data would be the fuel to drive innovation, and protecting this data will be among the prime focus areas for business leaders. Data backup and recovery will no longer be confined to just data protection; it will be a crucial part of an enterprise data security strategy. Hence, a robust backup and recovery framework, that addresses the needs arising from the constantly-evolving and complex digital ecosystem, will be paramount and enterprises must start realigning their backup and recovery mechanisms now to be ready for the future.