PodChats for FutureCIO: Time for cyber resilience as a security posture

Backup and disaster recovery solutions came into the market in 1978. At the time, however, the primary concerns were driven by power outages. In some parts of Asia, this remains true today. The Morris worm that hit 10% of internet-connected computers in a span of 24 hours, may have ushered the strategy of wiping systems to get rid of malware – a practice that is still done these days as a last resort.

Today, with more businesses relying on cloud services to conduct business, it is not surprising that the cloud backup market, alone, is expected to grow from US$4.57 billion in 2023 to US$13.85 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 24.84%. 

The primary driver for adopting cloud backup across businesses is the need for agility and flexibility in the face of accelerating innovation and disruptions from competitors due to the increase in cloud adoption.

With so much depending on the cloud, we ask Abhilash Purushothaman, vice president & general manager (Asia) at Rubrik to give us an update on backup strategies for the digital-native economy.

1.       In the digital economy, how important is backup and recovery? 

2.       Given what you just highlighted about innovations in storage and speed, do you think the cloud has made backup obsolete?

a.       Note: Organisations want resilience over recovery.

3.       How do you apply cyber resilience when organisations are adopting hybrid cloud strategies? 

a.       What major trends do you see shaping up in the cloud backup marketplace? 

4.       There are a variety of hybrid cloud backup solutions in the market. There is always a potential for this availability of different approaches to create confusion and in some cases even gaps in an organisation's ability to protect its data.

a.       Do you think it is better for organisations to limit the selection of solutions to a few? (2 pillars/teams: run the business, grow the business)

b.       If yes, how does the CIO/CTO decide what criteria to narrow the window of available offerings?

5.       What is the best way to optimise backup where the IT strategy revolves around a hybrid cloud?

6.       Given Rubrik's experience in backup and recovery events, what trends can we expect in the years to come?