We are about to head into a new year, and with that, new cybersecurity threats and protection strategies are sure to crop up. Veeam released its report on Cloud Protection trends for 2023 this past month and on their behalf, an independent research firm conducted a survey of 1,700 IT leaders regarding their use of cloud services in both production and protection scenarios. You can find the full report at http://vee.am/CPT23.

With the start of the pandemic, most businesses underwent a Digital Transformation. This included adopting cloud-hosted workloads, among other things. Two and a half years later, organizations have arrived at a more hybridized workload model with many companies opting to return to on-premises workloads altogether. According to the report, with these major shifts, heading into 2023 requires that data protection strategies include backup solutions that allow for secure migration from cloud to data center, or cloud to alternative cloud, based on business requirements. In their report Vaees states:

• “While lifted+shifted server instances are still the majority, the diverse mix suggests that data protection strategies in 2023 and beyond for cloud-hosted environments MUST protect the range of file shares and databases that are now running from cloud services. Surprisingly, some organizations underestimate how important previous versions and long-term retention are for cloud-hosted data when the PaaS services are natively durable. The resiliency of cloud services can sometimes incorrectly lead organizations to not back up their cloud-hosted workloads:

• 34% believe that their cloud-hosted file shares are durable or do not need

to be backed up

• 15% believe that their cloud-hosted databases are durable or do not need

to be backed up

• 81% of organizations anticipate utilizing cloud-based data protection (BaaS or DRaaS) by 2023.

• Today, 42% use cloud storage within their data center backup solution, while 58% use BaaS.

• When respondents were asked how they first added cloud capabilities to their data protection strategy:

• First used cloud storage, as part of a traditional data protection solution

• First enrolled in a managed BaaS subscription

But then, where are they today?

• 30% stayed as they started

• 70% switched from self-managed to BaaS or vice versa

• Nearly half (46%) of organizations, choose to self-manage their backup jobs, but rely on a BaaS provider for maintaining the backup server/services — this alone can significantly relieve IT teams by removing the “babysitting” and management of backup servers, storage, software patches, etc.

• A third (31%) of organizations prefer to delegate most backup operations (e.g., backup job monitoring, capacity planning, alerts, and even restore tasks) to BaaS service desks with an increased interest in “turn-key” or “white-glove” BaaS services.

• 46% currently want to manage their own services, which is down from 63% in 2021.”

No matter what methods of data storage and transfer are being used, data needs to be protected and available. Data protection and backup are both necessary though tremendous, time-consuming tasks, and as such, more and more businesses are choosing to outsource via BaaS services. As we head into 2023, businesses are nearly 20% less willing to manage their own data since 2021. With that comes an influx of job opportunities for BaaS, DRaaS, and PaaS service providers. To improve your understanding of the role the Cloud can play in your business, or to jumpstart a career in data management and protection, you can start with The Cloud and Business Course, a one-lesson course with an $8/month Cyber Phoenix subscription. Dive deeper into the Cloud with A Practical Introduction to Cloud Computing, Hands-on Azure Data Factory and Security, or Hands-on Azure Databricks and Security with a premium $17/month subscription.