Cloud Data Protection is Business Protection
In the Cloud, Data Protection Matters More Than Ever
“As I waded through a lake of rancid yogurt, each vile step fueled my rage over failed backups.” The server that ran a yogurt manufacturer’s automated packaging facility crashed. The IT team could recover some of the data, but not all. They hoped everything would “be OK”. When they restarted the production line, they learned that hope is not a plan. Machines sprayed yogurt like a 3 year old with a hose in a crowded church. By the time they shut down the line, they’d created a yogurt lake. It took two months to clean and re-certify the factory. They missed their quarterly earnings. People lost their jobs.
Data protection matters because data recovery matters. Even in the cloud. Especially in the cloud.
Businesses Run on Data
Digital transformation has turned every company into an application business.
Have you ever thought about the lightbulb business? Osram manufactured lightbulbs for almost a century. Then, LED bulbs decimated the lightbulb replacement business. Osram evolved into a lighting solution company. Osram applications optimize customers’ lighting for their houses, businesses, and stadiums. Now a high-tech company, they sold the traditional lightbulb manufacturing business in 2017.
How about the fruit business? Driscoll’s has grown berries for almost 150 years. In 2016, berries were the largest and fastest growing retail produce. Driscoll’s leads the market. They credit their “Driscoll’s Delight Platform”. It tracks and manages the berries from the first mile (growing) through the middle miles (shipping) to the last mile (retail consumer). Driscoll’s analyzes data at every stage to optimize the production and consumption of berries. Driscoll’s is a technology company that sells berries.
Every company is in the application business. Applications need data. To design lighting, Osram uses data about your house. To deliver the best berries, Driscoll’s analyzes data about the farms (e.g. soil, climate), shipping (e.g. temperature and route), and customer preferences.
Modern businesses depend on applications. Applications depend on data. Therefore, modern businesses depend on data.
Data Protection: Because of Bad Things and Bad People
Every company protects their data center because there are so many ways to lose data.
CIOs have seen their companies suffer through catastrophes. Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston data centers. Hardware fails and sometimes catches fire. Software bugs corrupt data. People delete the presentation before the biggest meeting of their lives, so they throw a stone at a wasps’ nest to incite a swarm, get rushed to the hospital with dozens of vicious stings to have an excuse to re-schedule (or so I’ve heard).
IT organizations have also survived deliberate attacks. External hackers strike for fun and profit. Ransomware has become mainstream; cyber criminals can now subscribe to Ransomware as a Service! Now, anybody can become a hacker. Some attacks happen from inside, too. A terminated contractor at an Arizona bank destroyed racks of systems with a pickaxe. (I’ll never forget the dumbfounded CIO muttering, “We think he brought the pickaxe from home.” Because that’s what mattered.)
After decades of enduring data loss, IT knows to protect the data center. Do we also need to protect data in the cloud?
Data Protection: Bad Things and Bad People Affect the Cloud
Every company needs to protect their data in the cloud because there are even more ways to lose it.
Bad things happen in the cloud. First, users still make mistakes. The cloud provider is not responsible for recovering from user error. Second, the cloud is still built of hardware and software that can fail. Vendors explain, “Amazon EBS volumes are designed for an annual failure rate (AFR) of between 0.1% — 0.2%, where failure refers to a complete or partial loss of the volume.” The applications you lose may be unimportant… or they may decimate your business. Third, since you are sharing resources, performance issues can affect data access. Amazon Prime Day is the most recent example. Finally, storms trigger data loss in a public cloud data center, just like they do in a corporate data center.
Public clouds are a bigger target for bad actors. Aggressive nations (with names that rhyme with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China), bitcoin miners, and traditional criminals hack companies running in the cloud. Those hacks obliterate companies. Hackers deleted Code Space’s data in AWS. Two days later, the business shut down. Meanwhile, the scope of the public cloud makes internal threats more serious. The pickaxe (or virus)-wielding employee can now damage hundreds of companies instead of one!
Data is not any safer in the cloud than it is on-premises. Cloud providers try to protect your data, but it’s not enough. Even in the cloud, it’s your data. It’s your business. It’s your responsibility.
Protect the Cloud Data, Protect the Business
Modern businesses run on applications. Applications run on data. Most companies that lose data go out of business in 6 months or less.
Unfortunately, bad things and bad people destroy, steal, or disable access to the data. Whether you run on-premises or in the cloud, one day you will lose data. If you have a good backup and disaster recovery solution, you can recover the data. Your business can survive.
Amazon CTO Werner Vogels declared, “Everything fails all the time.” Companies need to protect their data in the cloud, so they can recover from those failures. Now, more than ever.
