Expert asserts BaaS ‘critical for data centre security’

In an IT world clogged with acronyms, there is one that many data centers are failing to properly implement.

That's according to Comport principal cloud architect Eric Young, who believes Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) is critical for the security of data centers.

Young believes that as infrastructures become increasingly sophisticated, more opportunities arise for security breaches to occur, which means traditional backup may no longer be a viable solution.

"The statistics all point to outsourced backup as the solution that protects against security breaches, insufficient backup testing, and a lack of staff or resources," says Young.

"Virtual infrastructures will only become more complex with more data to collect. The time to upgrade is now."

To back up his claims, Young has provided a few reasons why BaaS is critical for data center security.

According to Young, in 2016 there were 4,000 unique ransomware attacks, with 15 percent of the SMBs experiencing an attack losing out on revenue. Young is confident that digital theft is a growing trend that is showing no sign of being stemmed anytime soon, and as companies grow without a BaaS solution they have more to lose than they can afford.

And then of course there is the issue of data regulations. Even if a traditional backup solution successfully recovers some of the data lost after an incident, it may not be able to quell fines or damaging headline - inadequate protection of data can cost a company millions of dollars, as in the cases of AT-T and Target (in breach of the FCC) and more recently Google (in breach of GDPR).

According to Young, information loss is the number one cost component of recovering from a cyberattack with 33 percent of companies experiencing a disruption in business and 21 percent experiencing a loss of revenue.

As you would expect, the larger a company, the more complex a full recovery can be. Relying on a traditional backup solution puts all the pressures of data retention and infrastructure examination on the IT department, while BaaS enables an organisation to lean on external sources during their times of need.