Storage’s Role in Addressing the Challenges of Ensuring Cyber Resilience

IT is facing new problems. Almost half of ESG study respondents (46%) believe IT is more difficult now than it was two years ago. This rise in complexity might be attributed to continuing digital transformation activities (mentioned by 29%), increased data quantities (35%), the fast growth of the cybersecurity environment (37%), and/or attempts to comply with new data security and privacy requirements (32%).

Organizations are also battling to address a serious scarcity of crucial IT skills. In fact, 48% of surveyed firms indicate a scarcity of cybersecurity professionals, making it the most often identified shortfall sector.

Furthermore, these firms are grappling with application, device, and remote/mobile worker sprawl, which is expanding the size and breadth of the security perimeter that IT is responsible for safeguarding.

Given the complexity of contemporary IT, the proliferation of data, and the ever-increasing cyberattack risks, IT teams often struggle to stay up. Attempting to solve complexity with just internal employees is a lost struggle. Modernizing the underlying infrastructure is required for success. When doing so, however, IT decision-makers must search for solutions that do more than merely fulfill application demands or ease operations. Achieving actual success entails identifying technologies that can meet those objectives while also improving the application environment's cyber-resiliency posture.

Cyberattacks and Ransomware: A Growing Threat

Organizations are facing escalating cybersecurity challenges, which are likely being pushed by rising financial incentives for hackers. Complaints from the American public to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), for example, climbed 69% in 2020 compared to 2019, with claimed damages topping $4.1 billion. Furthermore, the IC3 claims a total loss of $13.3 billion over the last five years. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the average duration of disruption following ransomware attacks on firms in the United States was 21 days. Clearly, ransomware has a significant detrimental effect on corporate operations.

There is a close relationship between IT complexity and cyberattack susceptibility. As IT becomes more complicated, cyberattacks will become more often and more expensive. Ransomware is a widespread threat that targets a company's most precious asset—its data. In 2020, the IC3 recognized 2,474 recorded ransomware occurrences, and ESG discovered that 63% of the firms questioned had suffered ransomware attacks in the previous year. In fact, 9% were subjected to ransomware assaults on a daily basis. Ransomware defense requires a technological plan that goes beyond typical cybersecurity and incorporates breakthroughs in data storage and data protection.

Data Storage's Role in Cyber Resilience

Storage systems and storage administrators both play important roles in ransomware protection. When ESG asked IT decision makers what steps their firms had in place to resist or mitigate ransomware attacks, 67% said they use cyber tools for proactive ransomware avoidance, and 53% said they have data recovery capabilities such as air-gapping. These two often highlighted answers emphasize the significance of not just establishing steps to prevent an attack, but also investing in solutions to guarantee the firm is prepared to recover if an attack happens. It is critical to avoid just implementing procedures to prevent or mitigate ransomware and then stopping. This "partial" approach produces a false feeling of security because, although efforts are made to minimize assaults, little or no effort is taken to construct an effective data recovery strategy prior to the necessity for it.

IBM is transitioning from cybersecurity to cyber resilience.

IBM is a recognized leader in cyber resilience because to its significant expertise in cybersecurity and risk management, and it provides a full portfolio of sophisticated storage and data protection solutions, including:

• IBM Flash System, IBM Cloud Object Storage, and IBM Spectrum Scale are main storage systems with data immutability and encryption.
• IBM Tape Storage, which also enables data immutability and encryption, as well as air-gap security.
• IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management software organizes and safeguards data copies.
• IBM Spectrum Protect Suite for further security. Spectrum Protect software-defined storage may store data on flash, disk, object storage, real or virtual tape, and other media. The malware and ransomware activity is then detected by recognizing big departures from usual access patterns.
• QRadar and Storage Insights products use AI-enhanced capabilities to assist improve identification of possible risks.

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