Storage trends for 2023

Issue 1 2023 IT infrastructure

As a leader in the enterprise storage market, we see five storage trends unfolding in 2023. Looking ahead, 2023 is shaping up to be an exciting year in the storage market.


Eric Herzog.

Convergence of cybersecurity and storage

CIOs and CISOs continue to realise that, if they do not combine storage with cybersecurity, they are leaving a gap in their corporate cybersecurity strategy. IT leaders are accustomed to protecting the network and endpoints, deploying firewalls and looking at the application layer. However, all of their data end up on storage.

The great awakening in the enterprise market, heading into the new year, is that if an enterprise storage solution does not have the capabilities to help combat a cyberattack, the C-suite and the IT team are leaving the organisation severely exposed. The trend is for storage that is buoyed by cyber resilience to be part of every comprehensive cybersecurity strategy in every large organisation.

Infinidat has developed storage solutions that perfectly align with cybersecurity solutions and strategies commonly used to protect enterprises, as well as cloud hosting providers, managed hosting providers and managed service providers. Infinidat and its partners work closely with CIOs and CISOs, along with other IT leaders and administrators, to make cyber resilient storage a key part of a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, plugging vulnerable gaps and securing the data against cyberattacks.

To enable organisations to activate the converged strategy for cybersecurity and storage, Infinidat provides state-of-the-art cyber resilience solutions, anchored by its InfiniSafe technology, which has baked security into every aspect of the storage estate for an enterprise data infrastructure.

Near-instantaneous recovery from a cyberattack

The question is not ‘if’ your organisation is going to be hit with a cyberattack, it is a question of ‘when’ and ‘how often’. Your organisation will be attacked, and it could be attacked multiple times. At that point, it is a matter of how you respond to that attack. Cyber resilience is among the most important and highly demanded requirements of enterprises today to combat cyberattacks across the entire storage estate and data infrastructure.

Even if your endpoint or your network security keeps the cyber criminals out once or twice, there will surely be times when they get through. When that happens, one of the critical things for an IT team is to get a known good copy of the data and make a speedy recovery. It is crucial to use an immutable [unchangeable] snapshot of the data to ensure that the data has not been compromised. In other words, the data can be trusted.

Finding a known good copy is done by curating the potential candidates to restore in a fenced forensic environment. The last thing you want to do is just start restoring data that has malware or ransomware infiltrated within it.

Infinidat provides cyber resilience on its InfiniBox platform, InfiniBox SSA II platform and InfiniGuard platform with its InfiniSafe cyber storage resilience software to encompass the complete portfolio. InfiniSafe combines immutable snapshots of data, a fenced forensic environment, logical air gapping, and virtually instantaneous data recovery.

Notably, the immutable snapshots and the rapid recovery are both backed by Infinidat’s cyber storage guaranteed SLAs. Unlike other storage vendors, Infinidat is guaranteeing your cybersecurity technology. Once a cybercriminal gets through an enterprise’s line of defence, it is all about resilience and recoverability of the data, building on a known good copy of the data, which Infinidat helps you more easily identify with automation, and put into a safe, fenced forensic environment. The cyberattack is nullified.

Harnessing the capability of anomalous pattern detection

We are seeing a trend emerging more broadly in 2023 around cyber scanning with the ability to do anomalous pattern detection, particularly on secondary storage. In the longer term, we see an expansion onto primary storage over the next 2 - 3 years. This cyber scanning is another tool in the storage admin’s tool bag, along with cyber resilience, to be proactively strengthening the data infrastructure to handle the ever-increasing sophistication and deceptiveness of cyberattacks. Whether for money, power or perverse entertainment, these attacks are designed to take down your business.

Infinidat is able to provide the anomalous pattern detection capability through our partnerships with backup vendors. Our ecosystem of partners enables us to deliver to customers the ability to do scanning on secondary storage. Infinidat’s ability to bring together complementary solutions and capabilities creates value for enterprise customers and partners. Since this is an evolving area of technology, as customer demand increases and there is a market need for various versions of this type of scanning, we envision Infinidat playing in this space for years to come, continuing to advance our enterprise storage solutions.

Demand for ease of deploying cyber storage and resilience

Enterprises and service providers are increasingly seeking easy-to-deploy and easy-to-use solutions that meet their needs for cyber storage resilience and integrated security technologies. They want not only automation, but also the next level up with autonomous automation. End-users do not want complex set-ups any more. They want to be able to quickly and efficiently access forensic environments, and when it comes to recovery of data, they expect two or three clicks to complete the job.

Users benefit from Infinidat’s set-it-and-forget-it approach to cyber storage. InfiniSafe is easy to deploy and easy to use. Infinidat has radically simplified the process by which enterprises can inject cyber storage resilience into their infrastructure.

Cyber resilience for primary and secondary storage

People often think that cyber storage resilience is only about backing up data. That is not true. Cyber storage resilience is more than backup. This is an important distinction, which speaks to a trend for the next year, because smart cyber criminals will not only attack your secondary datasets, like backup, but also attack your primary datasets. In recognition of this reality, enterprises and service providers are heading into the new year injecting new levels of cyber storage resilience into both their primary and secondary storage environments.

There is a shift in the enterprise market from being reactive – waiting for the cyber criminals to attack and then doing something about it – to proactively preparing for recovery, likened to disaster recovery. Companies usually have elaborate disaster recovery plans and business continuity measures. There is a growing awareness that ‘cyber disaster plans’ need to be put in place with the right set of capabilities to initiate and execute rapid recovery.

Infinidat provides cyber storage resilience on its InfiniBox and InfiniGuard solutions through InfiniSafe technology. Infinidat’s approach helps customers to accelerate the shift to being proactive, rather than simply being reactive. Cyber storage resilience enables an enterprise to nullify a ransomware attack. No ransom, no disruption.

For more information contact Infinidat, scapoor@infinidat.com, www.infinidat.com




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