Everything has two sides. For example, the advancement of science and technology, while using digitization to improve the efficiency of the entire society or enterprise, also makes it more and more difficult to maintain this order - the entire order is based on data, so it seems that it is necessary to destroy this order. It's "easier" than ever - what used to be done physically, can now be done technically and with less risk by destroying data. Therefore, between the protector of the order and the challenger, the offensive and defensive sides have changed from "officers and soldiers taking thieves" to frequent technical contests in the virtual world. The core of the contest is data, and how to ensure the security of data.
“Cyber attacks never stop. By 2021, organizations will be attacked every 11 seconds on average, 48% of which involve small and medium-sized enterprises. Attacks target data and extort ransom, with a global impact of up to $6 trillion. All industries will be affected without exception. Today is not about whether companies will be attacked, but when they will be attacked." At the end of 2021, Dell Technologies, based on the analysis of 1,000 IT decision makers in organizations around the world The data of the "2021 GDPI Survey" shows that the amount of data managed by enterprises now has increased from 1.45PB in 2016 to 14.6PB in 2021, an increase of more than 10 times five years ago. Chen Jie, general manager of Dell Technologies Greater China Data Protection Solutions Department, emphasized that another factor that increases the difficulty of data protection for enterprises is the emerging technologies (such as cloud-native applications, Kubernetes containers, artificial intelligence and machine learning), and there is currently a lack of adequately targeted data protection solutions.
Technological issues must ultimately be resolved through technical methods. Therefore, data protection issues still require new data protection theories, tools and solutions in order to maintain the order of the entire society and the business continuity of enterprises.
"Current trends related to data protection are undergoing a series of changes." Li Yan, technical director of data protection for Dell Technologies Greater China, emphasized in a speech recently that compared with traditional data protection concepts, enterprise-level Data protection has logically undergone four specific directional changes. First, from the perspective of data protection planning of enterprises, they are changing from focusing on functions in the past to focusing more on the overall strategy of enterprises; second, from the perspective of coping strategies, they are changing from the previous model of backing up data islands. In order to establish a unified backup storage pool model, it can cover from edge, data center to cloud, and then cover various application scenarios; third, from the perspective of the pertinence of emerging IT technologies, application companies are paying more attention to traditional technologies from the past. For the impact of data wave protection, it has changed to pay more attention to the impact of emerging technologies, hoping to achieve a "combination of maturity and modernity" in the field of data protection; fourth, from the perspective of results, it is changing from a network that focuses on the IT perspective. Security, transforming into "cyber resilience" from a business perspective.
In response to these four changes, Li Yan introduced four targeted theories and solutions proposed by Dell Technologies.
First, from the perspective of the overall data protection strategy and framework of the enterprise, Dell Technologies has proposed a "three-in-one" data protection overall architecture system. Specifically, it is to build a pyramid structure from low to high according to the importance of enterprise data: the bottom layer is to provide data backup for all data of the enterprise. "Backup can provide the most basic data protection for enterprises, and can comprehensively cover all workloads of the enterprise; at the same time, it can provide reliable, fast and low-cost data recovery." Li Yan emphasized that only "backup" operations cannot protect the site's failure, nor does it provide protection against hacker attacks and ransomware attacks. To ensure site stability and partially resolve hacker attacks and ransomware, we need to rely on the second line of defense based on "backup": "remote disaster recovery" for major enterprise data. To comprehensively solve the problem of enterprise data protection, it can only be achieved through the "data haven" at the top of the pyramid. "The data safe haven is aimed at the core data of the enterprise. By building a data safe haven in the enterprise, it can provide the enterprise with the ability to prevent hacker attacks and ransomware for key applications, and at the same time, it can also prevent internal attacks from Trojans. When the core data is stored in the data haven, the system can ensure the security of the data through intelligent scanning and analysis. Once the enterprise is hacked or attacked by ransomware, the data stored in the data haven can be used in a very short period of time. Complete data recovery can be achieved to ensure the continuity of enterprise business." Li Yan said.
Secondly, for "establishing a unified backup storage pool", Li Yan introduced that Dell Technologies uses PowerProtect DD series dedicated storage devices for data protection to seamlessly integrate any platform, any protection method, and any protocol in the enterprise to achieve unified protection of storage and storage. Unify cloud storage to establish a unified data protection resource pool, so as to build a unified data protection platform in the enterprise. Based on the enterprise data center, the front end can be extended to the edge, and the back end can be extended to various clouds . In turn, more enterprise application scenarios are included in the scope of data protection.
Third, as we all know, Dell Technologies has a "traditional" data protection suite, DPS suites, with all the backup technologies and capabilities in the industry. However, with the widespread use of cloud native, in 2019, Dell Technologies launched PPDM (PowerProtect Data Manager), a data protection solution for cloud native environments. At the time, this was the first and only enterprise-level protection solution in the market that supported consistent backup of Kubernetes applications. It also supported data backup of virtual machines and applications, allowing enterprise users to Data protection for mission-critical workloads. Therefore, in Li Yan's view: the combination of PowerProtect DD series data protection dedicated storage devices and data protection suite DPS suites is a successful experience with mature technical capabilities and obtained market verification; and the combination of DD and PPDM means that in Dell Technologies Data Protection Solutions' focus on modern applications is a targeted response to the impact of emerging IT technologies on data protection.
Finally, regarding the focus of enterprise users on data protection, should they stay in the traditional IT field? Or from the business continuity of the enterprise? "Cyber security is a process, capability and state, while cyber resilience is a capability and strategy." Li Yan believes that the ultimate goal of enterprise users for data protection is to have the ability to ensure business continuity, so establish Cyber resilience becomes a goal and direction. To build an enterprise's cyber resilience, in addition to the ability to have "cyber security", it is more important to add a "resilience", that is: how to minimize data loss and financial impact when a cyber attack occurs , to resume normal operations of the organization. "Traditionally, we tend to focus more on the identification, protection, response and discovery of cyber attacks, but we believe that in order to build cyber resilience, we also need to focus on resilience." Li Yan said that PowerProtect Cyber Recovery data haven is a key factor in achieving cyber resilience. .
At this point, in fact, we can roughly clarify the entire theoretical logic and solution architecture of Dell Technologies data protection: First, from backup to disaster recovery, to data haven, the trinity structure actually sorts out a business and business relationship for enterprises. The data protection logic is closely related to the importance of data. The three are not only a progressive relationship, but also an inseparable organic whole. This actually establishes a complete overall data protection model for enterprise users, and also provides a template for advanced practice. In such a theoretical framework, PowerProtect DD series dedicated storage devices for data protection build a basic backup storage pool. On this basis, the hardware devices with DD as the core are matched with the data protection suite DPS and the data protection solution PPDM respectively. The combination completes the underlying backup and disaster recovery of the entire "Trinity" architecture to a certain extent, and the PowerProtect Cyber Recovery data haven is the tip of the pyramid of the entire architecture.
"If an enterprise has actually formed its original research ideas, we can provide overall inspection and evaluation methods to sort out the overall structure for enterprise users." The "three-in-one" solution provided by Dell Technologies varies from various degrees to Speaking of, it is quite complete, but for many enterprise users, it may not have achieved the "trinity", but some of the "data backup" or "data disaster recovery" capabilities are still available. When answering the author's question, Chen Jie emphasized: Dell will consider helping enterprises to protect their original IT investment, and try to build a "trinity" data protection architecture on the basis of maximizing the use of original capabilities. No problem at all. However, "When an enterprise user adopts solutions from multiple manufacturers, there is often no way to truly achieve an effective overall protection, and at the same time may face more risks, so we provide an overall assessment, and also Based on the current situation of the customer, we can recommend the most effective overall architecture solution for the customer: based on factors such as the customer's budget and future business needs, it is recommended that the user build an overall trinity architecture." Chen Jie said.
The same problem seems to Li Yan: when customers start to think about the Trinity, they can actually consider gradually improving them step by step. First of all, you can use the infrastructure platform first, and get through the underlying data first." Li Yan said: "For user companies, choosing the same supplier to build a trinity architecture will obviously have better integration, more convenient updates, and higher costs. will be lower."
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