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Infinidat predicts 2023 storage trends

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With the challenge of blending storage and cybersecurity continuing in 2023 we ask Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer, Infinidat (www.infinidat.com) what we can expect to see in enterprise storage and whether vendors have in place the right foundations to respond quick enough.

“CIOs and CISOs are increasingly realizing that, if they don’t combine storage with cybersecurity, they’re leaving a gap in their corporate cybersecurity strategy.  IT leaders are accustomed to protecting the network and endpoints, deploying firewalls and looking at the application layer.  However, all their data ends up in storage.”

“The great awakening in the enterprise market, heading into 2023, is that, if an enterprise storage solution does not have the capabilities to help combat a cyberattack, the C-suite and the IT team are leaving the organization severely exposed.  The trend emerging is for storage that is buoyed by cyber resilience to be part of the overall comprehensive cybersecurity strategy in every large organization.”

“This means vendors must – if they don’t already – offer storage solutions that perfectly align with cybersecurity solutions and strategies commonly used to protect enterprises, as well as cloud hosting providers, managed hosting providers and managed service providers.  It will require a vendor and its partners to work closely with CIOs and CISOs, along with other IT leaders and administrators, to make cyber resilient storage a key part of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, plugging vulnerable gaps and securing the data against cyberattacks.”

“The question is not “if” your organization is going to be hit with a cyberattack; it’s a question of “when” and “how often.”  Your organization will get attacked, and it could get attacked multiple times.  At that point, it’s a matter of how you respond to that attack.  Even if your endpoint or your network security keeps the cyber criminals out once or twice, there will surely be times when they get through.”

“When that happens, one of the critical things for an IT team is to get a known good copy of the data and make a speedy recovery.  It’s crucial to use an immutable snapshot of the data to ensure that the data has not been compromised.  In other words, the data can be trusted.  Finding a known good copy is done by curating the potential candidates to restore in a fenced forensic environment.  The last thing you want to do is just start restoring data that has malware or ransomware infiltrated within it.”

“Once a cybercriminal gets through an enterprise’s line of defence, it’s all about resilience and recoverability of the data, building on a known good copy of the data.   As such vendors will need to offer solutions that combine immutable snapshots of data, a fenced forensic environment, logical air gapping, and virtually instantaneous data recovery – ideally with a rock-solid cyber storage guaranteed SLA.  A cyber resilient storage infrastructure helps you more easily identify threats with automation and put data into a safe, fenced forensic environment.  The cyberattack is nullified.”

“We see cyber scanning around the ability to do anomalous pattern detection, particularly on secondary storage increasing in 2023, before expanding further over the next two-three years.  This cyber scanning is another tool in the storage admin’s tool bag, along with cyber resilience, strengthening the data infrastructure to handle the ever-increasing sophistication and deceptiveness of cyberattacks.  Whether for money, power or perverse entertainment, these attacks are designed to take down your business.”

“Vendors will need to provide anomalous pattern detection capability, possibly through partnerships with backup vendors as part of a wider ecosystem.  This is an evolving area of technology, and it gives customers the ability to do scanning on secondary storage, adding further value for enterprise customers and partners.”

“The demand for ease of deploying cyber storage, resilience, and advanced security technologies will grow in 2023.  Enterprises and service providers want not only automation, but also the next level up with autonomous automation.  End-users don’t want complex set-ups anymore.  They want to be able to access forensic environments quickly and efficiently, and when it comes to recovery of data, they expect two or three clicks, and then be done with it.  As such, vendors will need to respond with a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ approach to cyber storage, offering advanced technology that is also easy to deploy and use.”

“Cyber storage resilience is more than backup.  Smart cyber criminals won’t only attack your secondary datasets, like backup, but also attack your primary datasets.  In recognition of this reality, enterprises and service providers will need to inject new levels of cyber storage resilience into both their primary and secondary storage environments.”

“There is a shift in the enterprise market starting to happen from being reactive – waiting for the cyber criminals to attack and then doing something about it – to proactively prepare for recovery, likened to disaster recovery.  Companies usually have elaborate disaster recovery plans and business continuity measures.  There is a growing awareness that “cyber disaster plans” need to be put in place with the right set of capabilities to initiate and execute rapid recovery.”

“This means in 2023 vendors need to help customers rethink their approaches to cyber storage resilience, shifting approach reactive to proactive.  Cyber storage resilience enables an enterprise to nullify a ransomware attack, as if the attack didn’t even happen.  No ransom, no disruption and full protection against attacks.”