Key data protection trends for 2021

The current situation has made us realize that Digital Transformation has become a buzz word across industries and in recent times has transformed into a key element of business strategy. It has even become an indicator of an organization’s growth and success. We have witnessed a growth of digital transformation in our country but at the same time, it has made it inevitable for organizations to miss out on agile data privacy and security infrastructure. According to Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) report, India saw a 37% increase in cyberattacks in the first quarter (Q1) of 2020, as compared to the fourth quarter (Q4) of last year.

Therefore, as organizations aggressively embrace digital transformation in the future, it will become imperative for them to better protect and manage their critical data by deploying robust data protection solutions. It will also be a necessity for CTOs and CIOs and not a choice to protect and secure the data of their customers. Few trends, which we believe would set the course for the data protection landscape this year are:

• Security automation: The increasing cyber-attacks in the year 2020 has made organizations rethink their security measures, especially in terms of enterprise data security, to safeguard their valuable data. Security automation is the answer for organizations looking to secure their critical data in the future. Security automation is the machine-based execution of security actions with the power to programmatically detect, investigate, and remediate cyber threats without human intervention. The system will identify incoming threats from both external and internal stakeholders, and would alert the DBAs as per the priority and level of threat. Cybersecurity will have to become more flexible as many businesses are changing the way they operate. Automating security processing using AI tools will help companies to achieve this flexibility level.
• Endpoint security: As organizations are expanding more work from home and remote working solutions for their employees, the number of vulnerable endpoints manifolds itself. The current operating model nowadays has increased the amount of data being generated on a day-to-day basis, which is the lifeblood of business, and protecting it is paramount to organizational success. In such a situation, centralized security systems prove ineffective because of the disrupted landscape. Hence, endpoint security will become a necessity to manage multiple open points and help regulate data traffic through data loss prevention and monitor the incoming and outgoing connection of sensitive and mission-critical data.
• Increased investment in cybersecurity and privacy solutions: Today, data protection has transformed itself into a priority for CIOs and organizations are investing heavily to safeguard their IT architecture against any kind of cyber threat or malware attack. In the year 2021, about 42% of the organizations in India and globally, will continue to invest in cybersecurity and privacy solutions to steer away from the rising cyber-attacks in the era of remote working.

As we have entered the new year, it will be important for solutions providers to see that their data protection and cybersecurity offerings are available to customers as per their consumption needs. The pandemic has forced several organizations to relook into their IT budgets. Hence, customers will be more keen to invest in specific solutions like data protection for endpoints or against malwares, rather than investing heavily on the entire suite.

To stay competitive and continue with their growth trajectory amid the current situation, organizations need to digitally transform their IT infrastructure. They need to accelerate their data mining and extract maximum insights available from the collected data sets. However, at the same time, they even need to diligently focus on security and privacy concerns. It has been noted that more than 90% of the organizations in India and globally have fast-tracked their digital transformation journey and with most of the organizations adopting the work from home model, data generated will multiply itself like never before.  Hence, organizations need to prepare themselves for any future contingencies by offering innovative and holistic data protection solutions beyond traditional data centers, across the edge to core to cloud. It will be interesting to see how organizations move ahead with both digital transformation and cyber-security at the same time and win over the challenge posed in the current times.