In today’s increasingly digital world, businesses and individuals depend heavily on data for decision-making, operations and innovation, making data resilience critical.

As a result, backup, recovery and cyber resilience should all come together under the same umbrella of data resilience, according to Anand Eswaran (pictured), chief executive officer of Veeam Software Group GmbH.

Veeam’s Anand Eswaran talks with theCUBE about why data resilience plays a critical role in cybersecurity.

“I’d say data is the currency of every modern business today, actually not just business [but] of every city [and] of every government, regardless of size,” he said. “If data stops, if that data becomes unavailable, your business stops. When I think of this whole thing — you talked about backup, recovery [and] cyber resiliency — I encapsulate the whole thing in data resilience. Veeam is the number one market leader in data resilience. We’ve been at it for 18 years with one intention, bringing the focus on data resilience because data resilience for me is business resilience.”

Eswaran spoke with theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante at the Cyber Resiliency Summit, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed why data resilience should be top of mind for organizations when it comes to backup, recovery and cyber resilience. (* Disclosure below.)

Delving deeper into Veeam’s five pillars of data resilience

Data resilience is no longer just a safety measure, it’s a core enabler of growth, trust and innovation. As a result, the five pillars of backup, recovery, portability, security and artificial intelligence should be given a keen eye, according to Eswaran.

“When we think of data resilience as Veeam, we think of it in five different dimensions,” he said. “It obviously starts with backup and recovery; 96% of the time, the ransomware hackers [and] the bad actors start with trying to compromise the backups for a reason. Backup and recovery is critical; it’s the foundation.”

Given that portability ensures data can be moved and accessed flexibly, security safeguards data against threats, and artificial intelligence enhances efficiency, prediction and automation; they are key data resilience pillars. This is because they play a key role in creating a comprehensive strategy, Eswaran pointed out.

“For true resilience, you need to think about three more dimensions,” he said. “You need to think about portability. How do you make sure your data is portable across environments? The fourth pillar is security. Far beyond what we’ve talked about historically, which is [multifactor authentication], end-to-end encryption. You need to think about security in a much more holistic way, which allows you to have the best ransomware protection and recovery posture as a company. And finally, AI. How are you using AI to get insight and get to the best cybersecurity posture possible and stay five steps ahead of the attackers?”

Partnerships make a big difference in data resilience

Partnerships are critical in achieving and maintaining data resilience because they foster collaboration, resource sharing, ransomware protection and collective problem-solving. As a result, Veeam has already set the ball rolling, according to Eswaran.

“On one side, we work with the security companies,” he said. “We work with Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike and Sophos, and the list is long. This is where we have [application programming interface]-level integration between us. We are passing information back and forth to what the threat patterns we see on our site to Splunk, CrowdStrike, et cetera. The second thing I would call out is our partnerships with larger companies like Microsoft [and] Amazon. That’s where the AI partnership with Microsoft has driven off the fact that together we can actually create a much better security posture for our customers.”

Data resilience is critically important because breaches are inevitable, and organizations need to be prepared to mitigate the impact and recover quickly when they occur, according to Eswaran. This calls for data loss and business downtime planning. 

“Expect a breach to happen. It’s not a question of if, but it’s when — 3/4 of all companies have been breached this year, and 1/4 have been breached more than four times,” Eswaran said. “When breaches happen, 92% of the time, the data is encrypted. Seventy-six percent of the time, the data is exfiltrated, and 80% of the companies pay ransom. So, plan for something to happen, and what is your appetite for [recovery time objective] and [recovery point objective]? The second thing I would say is [to] think of resilience holistically. Not just backup, not just recovery or not just as some companies would want you to do just security.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the Cyber Resiliency Summit: 

(* Disclosure: Veeam Software Group GmbH sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Veeam nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE