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Bouncing back: Why your customers need to shift focus from cyber security to cyber resiliency

By Lucas Salter, General Manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, Data Protection, Dell Technologies

Managing cyber security in 2021 is like the Irresistible Force versus Immovable Object. Neither side of the equation is likely to give way, and for every new defence, there seems to be an equal yet opposite threat. It’s a stalemate at best, a war of attrition at worst.

The result? There are approximately 3,600 cyber security vendors globally, and they all say the same thing – that they can protect you. But can they?

The reality is that the only way for your customers to properly protect their data is to back it up and store it in a place where it cannot be attacked. This might sound drastic, but isolation removes the target from a place where it can be reached and keeps your organisation in a state of quick recovery in the advent of the unthinkable happening.

How do organisations achieve safety, resiliency, and isolation in 2021?

The numbers behind Cyber Security in 2021

Cyber security statistics in 2021 make for surprising reading.

Worldwide, Cyber security Ventures predicts that there’s a cyber security incident or ransomware attack every 11 seconds. And the average cost of cybercrime is $6.8m, according to Accenture research from 2018.

And this isn’t a rest of the world problem either – Australia is equally at risk.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre received over 67,500 cybercrime reports last year, an increase of nearly 13 per cent over the previous financial year. That equates to one report of a cyberattack every 8 minutes. Just compare that to last year, when the average was one every 10 minutes.

It’s clear that cyber security incidents are on the rise, and organisations are in the crosshairs.

Evolving from Cyber Security to Cyber Resiliency

How can your customers respond to these threats? Increased remote work and the ongoing adoption of emerging technologies are just some of the strains on data protection processes and systems.

Your customers need to be better prepared for not just an attack, but the aftermath of an attack. And that means shifting thinking from simply looking at cyber security to investing in cyber resiliency.

Cyber resiliency is the “the ability to anticipate, withstand, recover from and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources” according to the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology Cyber security Framework.

A cyber resiliency strategy covers three stages – before, during and after. The “before” timeframe includes the “identify” and “protect” activities which covers the assessment and protection of an organisation against known risks. The “during” timeframe focuses on “detect” and “respond”, where threats are identified and an organisation mitigates and understands the threats against it. Finally, there is “recovery”, where organisations must get back on their feet and recover quickly following an attack.

The benefits of isolation

Isolation is a key principle behind a comprehensive data security and resiliency strategy, and it’s the best way your customers can prepare themselves for speedy recovery from a cyberattack. It accelerates data recovery timelines, preserves data integrity, and ensures recoverability.

Isolation is powered by automated workflows that securely move copies of business critical data into a remote environment. Ideally, isolation solutions will also use intuitive dashboards that will allow to create protection policies quickly and easily, while also displaying information on potential threats in real time.

So, your customers will no longer solely rely on a shield that’s meant to protect everything. Instead, they’re removing critical data - the focus of attacks - from the battlefield and keeping it in a safe place where it’s ready to recover if something goes wrong.

Backup as a Service in action

Macquarie Cloud Services provides public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud solutions for businesses. As part of this offering, they were keen to create a premium Backup as a Service (BaaS) offering to deliver cyber resiliency value for clients.

Macquarie Cloud Services turned to Dell Technologies Data Protection Suite and Power Protect DD Series appliances to deliver a unified multi-cloud BaaS platform for customers. Power Protect DD Series appliances allow customers to use existing backup solutions and provide edge to core data protection. And Dell Technologies' Cyber Recovery Solution provides an air-gapped (isolated) recovery solution for mission critical data.

The managed cloud provider now protects 200 petabytes of data and conducts 155k backup jobs for clients every month, with 95% of those backups completed within an hour.

Ensuring continuity

It’s clear that your customers need to be prepared for anything – with threats increasing, it’s not enough to just protect themselves.

Your customers need to adapt to change and adopt new and emerging technologies, even as they stretch their data security. They also need to continue to evolve – to do better work and offer a better product to their customers.

In the face of increasing threats, a robust cyber resiliency strategy powered by capable and flexible technology from a trusted partner is critical for ensuring continuity if the worst is to happen.

To find out more about the Dell Technologies Security offerings visit our website.