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 Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Symantec India, predicts that data loss prevention will emerge as the single biggest challenge for businesses and hence the largest opportunity
The ever-evolving business environment has led to a situation of constant threat that envelopes businesses at large. At a time when the global economy is showing signs of recovery and is slowly emerging from the economic crisis, India has consolidated its position as the world’s fastest-growing major economy after China. The Indian economy is now more open to trade and investment, and despite the global downturn, India fared better than most countries, and is estimated to grow at 6.5 percent this fiscal.
A large number of SMBs are contributing to the growth of the Indian economy. According to AMI Partners, in these times of global recession, SMBs feel that they need to have even better customer relationship management to increase customer loyalty.
Growth of the IT market
The IT market is showing signs of optimism. However, the lessons of the past will not be forgotten. Outcome-based service/Opex models will start penetrating the market. Concerns about data security and availability will gain momentum. The provisions of the IT Act will help accelerate archiving and data protection. Good corporate governance needs will drive adoption in the compliance areas.
Disaster recovery (DR) will be a discussion point. About 79 percent of Indian enterprises faced computer system failures last year. Virus attacks and fear of data loss were and will remain the major initiators for DR plans in 2010.
Changes in technology infrastructure, natural disasters, compliance factors and pressure from customers, suppliers and the competition are other factors which will prompt Indian enterprises to opt for a DR plan. Our IT DR survey shows that DR budgets are expected to increase in the next 24 months.
Technology trends for 2010
I foresee the following technology trends for 2010.
2010 ends stockpiling of back-up tapes for long-term retention. Back-up is the wrong application for information retention because it is organized around information islands—systems—rather than information itself. An active, de-duplicated archive with automated retention and deletion reduces the cost and time of long-term information storage and retrieval. In 2010, the role of back-up will change to focus on short-term recovery—fast, de-duplicated back-ups, and rapid, granular recovery with built-in replication to DR sites. Over the next several years, enterprise demand will lead to maturity in cloud computing solutions, especially with respect to virtualization techniques, risk management and pricing models.
Data breaches continue. According to a Symantec-IDC report on data loss prevention, well-meaning insiders continue to represent the bulk of data loss incidents, and nearly one out of every six Indian enterprises is impacted by issues of data loss. Despite data loss being considered a threat, only 15 percent of organizations adopt any form of data loss prevention measures.
Clearly, more needs to be done to prevent sensitive information from leaving an organization. Though the increased use of wireless mobile devices by employees leads to greater mobility and efficiency, data loss is causing companies to rethink policies of issuing smart phones and laptops to employees.
Rogue security software vendors escalate their efforts. Expect to see the propagators of rogue security software scams taking their efforts to the next level, even by hijacking users’ computers, rendering them useless, and holding them for ransom. A less drastic next step however would be software that is not explicitly malicious but dubious at the worst.
| Takeaways for 2010 |
- Outcome-based service/Opex models will start penetrating the market
- There will be an end to stockpiling of back-up tapes for long-term retention
- Data breaches will continue because only 15 percent of organizations have adopted any form of data loss prevention measures
- Rogue security software vendors will escalate their efforts
- It will be a year of migration, especially to new Microsoft platforms
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Information security professionals face the challenge of detecting malicious activity in a constant stream of discrete events which are usually associated with an authorized user and are generated from multiple network, system and application sources.
A year of migration. According to Gartner, live migration for availability will have longer term implications. This is key to cutting costs, lowering complexity, as well as increasing agility as needs shift. As organizations migrate to new Microsoft platforms over the next year, they will need various storage management and data management technologies in place.
While upgrading is not always a priority for IT organizations, newer versions can offer technological advancements and performance enhancements which can help organizations to meet their SLAs. As organizations migrate, they will likely make technology improvements across the board to provide improved protection and management that will support all Microsoft applications. However, it is important that organizations not treat these new applications in a silo manner, and apply platform-level back-up, de-duplication, archiving, retention and e-discovery solutions. A trusted platform can address both new and old applications in a centralized way.
Customers still have critical information that needs to be secured, but with the amount of information doubling every two years, so would the need for comprehensive solutions. Symantec, along with its partners, aims to help customers reduce costs, minimize risk and deliver a near-term return on investment.
Channel focus
The role of channel partners is evolving, and at different levels of technology it varies. Some partners have moved away from volume to value, some have carved their niche around technology domains, others have mastered supply chain logistics to ensure lower costs of acquisition.
In the years to come, it will be our endeavor to work with partners to focus on upcoming technologies and continuously innovate, keeping in mind the increased benefits we could offer to customers.
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