Data Recovery Market Trends

Data recovery is more important than ever in this era of constant cyber attacks and ransomware.

The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) looked into 80,000 incidents in 2020, of which more than 5,000 were confirmed as data breaches.  

Phishing attacks are the top avenue of incursion, responsible for 85% of all breaches. With 13% of human-related breaches containing ransomware, being able to recover rapidly is now top of mind in the enterprise.

That is driving strong demand for tools that help the enterprise to recover rapidly from outages, disasters, and cyber attacks.  

The Many Flavors of Data Recovery 

For some, data recovery means having a copy of data to hand in the cloud, in a disk-based appliance, or on tape.

For others, it is about having a redundant data center or colocation facility housing all enterprise data and systems. Regardless of how it is done, the goal is to prevent as little lost time and lost data as possible. 

But the changing landscape of the technology world is constantly serving up new data recovery trends. Here are some of the top trends that IT and storage professionals are wrestling with:

See more: The Data Backup and Recovery Market

Ransomware Protection 

“The big trend in data recovery right now is protecting against ransomware with better backups,” said Greg Schulz, an analyst with StorageIO Group.  

Ransomware attacks like those on Colonial Pipeline and JBS meat plants get all the headlines.

But according to the Cybersecurity Threatscape by Positive Technologies, cybercriminals are going after firms of all shapes, sizes, and industries.

For example, there was a 91% jump in attacks on industrial companies over the past year and a 54% rise in malware-related attacks to industrial firms compared to 2019.

Similarly, the number of attacks on medical institutions increased by 91%, the top target currently for ransomware attacks. 

“Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and overloaded health systems worldwide, hackers added fuel to the fire by disrupting the availability of medical information systems with devastating consequences,” said Positive Technologies analyst Yana Yurakova.

“In 2020, the total damage caused by ransomware attacks against medical institutions in the U.S. was estimated to reach $20.8 billion.”

The Rising Profile of an Air Gap 

With so much malware on the go, more and more enterprises are instituting an air gap — or a physical gap between the network and the storage media.

Backups and storage media that are connected directly to the web are susceptible to infection by malware. By removing the media completely from the network, the data is better secured. 

“Only air-gapped storage is appropriate protection against ransomware attacks, and tape is the only enterprise-scale technology that has been designed to be managed in an offline air gap,” said Rich Gadomski, head of tape evangelism at FujiFilm Recording Media U.S.A. 

This has caused a resurgence in tape system sales, particularly for archiving systems that offer an air gap and have the ability to provide requested files to the enterprise rapidly. 

Backup Systems Being Refreshed

There are many of backup applications out there. But the technology and threat landscape have evolved so much in recent years that many systems now face obsolescence.

Companies are demanding the latest backup and data recovery solutions to defend themselves from threats.

Forty percent of organizations will replace their backup applications by 2022, according to Gartner. Backup approaches that are tape only, all cloud, or all disk, such as deduplication appliances, are ripe for replacement. Users now need systems that can cope with everything — and that means disk and tape and cloud. 

“Modern backup systems must be able to seamlessly and rapidly transition from tape to disk to cloud,” said Chris Cummings, VP of marketing at FalconStor. 

Comprehensive Cloud Protection 

Many enterprises went all-in on cloud-only strategies. Such approaches, however, are now being questioned due to not-infrequent shutdowns of cloud services.

Configuration glitches, networking failures, and cyber attacks are among the many causes of service failures from the big cloud providers.

Thus, enterprises are realizing that they need to find ways to avoid single points of failure in the cloud. 

“Cloud outages and disruptions, as well as auditors asking the question of how vulnerable cloud apps and data may be, are driving organizations to backup cloud data to another cloud or physical location,” said Schulz, with StorageIO Group. 

See more: Top Cloud Security Companies & Solutions

Recovery Speed Versus Backup Speed

For years, the focus for backup has been shortening the backup window.

Horror stories of windows taking longer than the time available — such as the entire evening or weekend — put the emphasis on areas such as deduplication, bandwidth, staging of backups, imaging, and incremental backups. These were all an effort to shorten the backup window. 

But the focus has shifted from speed of backup to speed and granularity of recovery.

Users want systems that can recover rapidly and want to be able to bring specific data back online with greater speed. 

See more: Data Science Market Trends