Today’s data-driven environment means we’re living in a digital world. Many of the promises of “the world of the future” that were pictured years ago have become a reality, as homes are smarter, shopping is easier, and we’re constantly connected to our loved ones. For companies around the world, data and automation have combined to increase business productivity to new heights.

Yet all of those advances and the reliance on data are creating a variety of new challenges. Data volumes are exploding as we generate 3 exabytes of data every day. In fact 90% of the data from throughout history was created in the past two years.

The data that companies collect is their most valuable resource. Data is vital to their R&D, engineering, marketing and operations, which means they have to store, manage and protect all of these digital assets – from the data to the applications to the systems needed to compete.

Given the speed of technological change and sheer growth in data volumes, companies are facing three emerging trends that they must address if they want to survive.

Today’s New IT Challenges

1. Complexity – As companies look for competitive advantages, they’re demanding lower latency, faster response times, better availability on intermittent connectivity, and optimized data uploads to public cloud data centers. In response, computing power is moving closer to where data originates in the form of Internet of Things devices and mobile devices. We estimate that soon only 1% of computing devices will be located in data centers.

This decentralization creates much greater complexity that IT pros must manage. Instead of worrying only about a centralized data center, they will have to protect every device and endpoint that can access or store company data.

2. Security – Not only do IT pros need to handle more data and increasingly complex infrastructures, but they also must protect them from the latest cyberthreats. Global damages from ransomware alone are expected to reach $20 billion within two years (57-times more than 2015), the growth of which is being powered by tech-savvy criminals using huge amounts of computing power and the latest AI to industrialize their malware. By outpacing the protection offered by traditional signature-based anti-malware solutions, they’re creating a flood of zero-day attacks that are much more effective and damaging.

Given how reliant modern companies are on data, attacks are not limited to taking a system down or stealing sensitive data. We’re about to enter an era in which undetected tampering with data can adversely affect business processes and decision-making. Companies increasingly rely on AI to process large volumes of data to make decisions. By altering data being input, attackers can alter the results of that analysis so a company makes bad decisions.

To be effective, attacks need only make small data modifications. By targeting a hospital’s electronic medical records, hackers could change prescriptions or dosage instructions, causing potentially lethal complications for patients.

Companies need both anti-malware defenses that can keep pace with industrialized cyberthreats and a trustworthy, unbreakable means of verifying and certifying the authenticity and integrity of their data.

3. Cost – Figuring out how to cover the costs of larger data volumes and increasingly complex IT infrastructures is another major consideration. In addition to the cost of storing and protecting data, managing more complex infrastructure requires closer attention from the IT department, which can prevent it from focusing on more productive, strategic responsibilities.

The right approach can help contain costs and streamline IT’s efforts. Modern cyber protection that integrates data protection and cybersecurity is the best way forward.

Balancing Five Vectors of Cyber Protection

One hour of unexpected downtime costs $300,000, whether the cause is a ransomware attack, server failure, or accidental deletion of critical data. Having systems in place to prevent and recover from such data losses is mission-critical, which is why CEOs and other top executives are losing their jobs in the wake of catastrophic data-loss events.

Those tech leaders who rely on traditional IT approaches can expect to struggle in the face of these new complexity, security and cost challenges. To protect their companies – and their careers – they’ll need a new strategy that is designed with these challenges in mind, one that addresses the Five Vectors of Cyber Protection (also known as SAPAS).

Safety: Ensure that a reliable copy of your data is always available

Accessibility: Make your data easily available from anywhere at any time

Privacy: Control who has visibility and access to your data

Authenticity: Have undeniable proof a copy of your data is an exact replica of the original

Security: Protect your data, apps, and systems against malicious threats

Covering all Five Vectors of Cyber Protection presents its own set of challenges. Companies might use a variety of solutions to address individual vectors, but such a patchwork creates gaps, no matter how powerful an individual tool might be.

In addition, each of these vectors can occasionally compete and interfere with one another. Putting data online might support the goal of accessibility, but without password protection and encryption it won’t be private. Similarly, storing a hard drive in lockbox might meet safety goals, but the resulting lack of data accessibility would render it essentially useless.

The key to effective cyber protection is having a single solution that offers the right balance across all five vectors.

Strength through Integration

Acronis can deliver complete cyber protection because we’ve built integrated solutions which together address the Five Vectors at every step – from the underlying infrastructure to its cloud-based delivery platform.

• Acronis Cyber Infrastructure integrates compute, storage and networking in a secure universal software-defined infrastructure solution.
• Acronis Cyber Platform is a customizable, extendable platform that ensures the quick implementation of cyber protection for any application, data processing element, and data storage instance in any environment.
• Acronis Cyber Cloud gives services providers and a company’s IT staff the ability to deliver integrated cyber protection services (backup, disaster recovery, storage and blockchain-based data notarization) from a private or public cloud.

As a result of this unified, integrated approach, Acronis provides easy, efficient and secure cyber protection for organizations and businesses of any size.

To read more about Acronis’ approach to cyber protection, visit acronis.com/en-us/cyber-protection.