Many organizations today base their IT budgets on the volume of their stored data – rather than on its value – because they lack visibility into their ever-growing petabytes of data. 

Without knowing what information it holds, organizations are forced to spend time and money storing, protecting, backing up, and managing data that costs more than it’s worth. And unfortunately, for the typical enterprise, the majority of their data holds no value. 

As a trusted advisor, you can help your customers move from data-rich to data-driven. 

In teaming up with Veritas, Hitachi Vantara offers a better approach. By solving the fundamental problem of data visibility, Hitachi Vantara and Veritas integrate all data types to deliver a unified data services approach that helps customers reduce risk from costly security incidents, save money, and increase overall efficiencies. Gone are the silos, replaced by a clear view of the data over a single interface.   

Phil Goodwin, a research vice president in IDC’s infrastructure systems, platform and technologies group, says there are four steps companies need to take to get the most out of this new data management environment:

• Conduct a business assessment. Another name for this is a threat assessment. Think about the risk to the organization’s data. IT teams can start by asking what are the type of events that can go wrong? How can data be accessed internally? What are the access points externally? Take the time to look across the core, cloud, and edge and all the different ways a bad actor could exploit vulnerabilities.  
• Take an inventory of the organization’s data – and encrypt it. Look at how the organization defends its data today. Even though IT managers that encrypt data report performance lags on storage arrays, encrypting data at rest and in flight has become an essential part of defending against inappropriate data access.  
• Assess the company’s data protection process. Look at this from a recovery perspective. If something does go wrong, start with intrusion detection to keep bad threat actors out. Then the organization needs to prepare for an incident by listing out all the steps of the recovery process. The organizations that are prepared and have written out these steps are in a stronger position to survive a crisis like a ransomware attack without actually paying the ransom. 
• Deploy proper monitoring and reporting capabilities. Determine if the company has the monitoring and reporting capabilities to identify potential attacks. Here’s where artificial intelligence and machine learning can deliver the monitoring service levels that can address today’s threats.

All of these issues have become more important as your customers face an increased threat landscape. In the best of all possible worlds, nobody wants to tell the C-Suite that the company has no choice but to pay the ransom. By organizing the company’s data around visibility and having the right people, processes and technology in place, the company can avoid the worst elements of a ransomware attack. 

Image source: Getty Images / Hitachi Vantara