2024 Data Protection Trends Report: Key Insights and Implications 

As we move into Q2 2024, data protection remains a critical area of focus for organizations worldwide. The “2024 Data Protection Trends Report” by Veeam Software provides a comprehensive analysis of the current landscape and future directions in data protection.

This report is based on insights from over 1,200 unbiased IT leaders and implementers in 10 countries who are leading data protection strategies for enterprise organizations of various sizes. The report had four agenda items: What are IT leaders thinking about? Where does the cloud fit? Cyber continues to be ‘when’ not’ if, ‘ and most are not ready for a disaster. Below is an overview of the report.

Increasing Investment in Data Protection

One of the report’s standout findings is the increasing investment in data protection. Organizations are expanding their IT budgets and allocating a larger portion specifically to data protection. According to the survey, 92% of organizations are increasing their data protection budgets, and protection budgets are expected to grow by 6.6%.

This trend underscores the growing recognition of data as a critical asset that needs robust protection systems. As cyber threats become more sophisticated and pervasive, the need for advanced data protection solutions becomes a top priority.

Summary of the Data Protection Trends Report

1. Key Trends in Data Protection

Backup Solutions

A significant 54% of organizations indicated a strong likelihood of changing their primary backup solutions within the next twelve months. Several factors drive this willingness to switch:

• Improved Reliability:

Enhancing the success rate of backups remains a top priority. Unreliable backup solutions can lead to significant data loss and operational disruptions.

• Cybersecurity Integration:

The ability to detect and remediate cyber threats, particularly ransomware, is crucial. Organizations are looking for backup solutions that offer integrated cybersecurity features.

• Diversification:

Organizations want to diversify and use different data protection tools for different workloads. Thus, they can work with a more robust data security system, ensuring better protection from data loss and cyber threats.

Cloud Integration and Hybrid Flexibility

The report highlights the growing importance of cyber integration in modern data protection strategies. Hybrid cloud environments, which combine on-premises and cloud resources, are becoming increasingly popular too. Organizations believe that these elements are the most important in modern data protection:

• Cyber-integrated Solutions:

Data protection solutions that integrate cybersecurity tools are the top choice for organizations. Such solutions offer comprehensive protection against various data threats, including cyber threats.

• Cloud-to-Cloud Workload Mobility:

Moving workloads seamlessly between cloud services, such as Amazon and Azure, is a significant advantage as it offers hybrid flexibility.

2. Challenges in Data Protection

Enterprise Backup

An enterprise backup solution is crucial for ensuring business continuity and data integrity by safeguarding against data loss due to hardware failures, cyberattacks, human errors, and natural disasters. The top attributes organizations consider when choosing an enterprise backup tool are:

• Consistent Reliability:

Backup solutions must always be reliable to protect and recover data during data disasters. Thus, reliability is the most crucial attribute for organizations.

• Support Modern cloud-hosted workloads:

Support for modern cloud-hosted workloads like SaaS and IaaS is crucial for ensuring comprehensive data protection and seamless recovery across all environments where business operations occur. As organizations increasingly adopt cloud services for scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, backing up these workloads is essential to safeguard against data loss, downtime, and compliance risks.

• Ease of Management:

Another crucial attribute is the ease of management across different locations and geographies. An enterprise backup solution that seamlessly backs up data across every location and platform is essential for large companies with various places that can spread across geographies.

DX Challenges

Cybersecurity threats and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals are the top anticipated challenges for organizations in the next 12 months. The intersection of these areas highlights the need for data protection strategies that safeguard data and align with broader organizational goals, such as sustainability and ethical governance.

3. Customers in the Cloud

Cloud storage has become crucial in the modern data environment as organizations have migrated from traditional storage to modern ones like the cloud. However, these data require protection against data disasters, ensuring total data recovery during a disaster. A survey on cloud backup revealed:

• 74% of the surveyed organizations use third-party backup products or BaaS services to secure their data outside the M365 environment.
• Most organizations still only back up their containers.
• In the next two years, 88% of the surveyed organizations will likely use BaaS and DRaaS to protect their servers.
• Most organizations choose cloud infrastructure or DRaaS over multiple self-managed data centers.

4. Cyber-resiliency: Not ‘If’ but ‘When’

Cyber-resiliency is no longer a matter of “if” but “when,” as cyberattacks have become rampant and inevitable in today’s digital landscape. Organizations cannot afford to neglect cybersecurity because the frequency, sophistication, and variety of cyber threats continue to escalate, targeting businesses of all sizes and sectors.

Below is the analysis of cyber-resiliency:

• Cyber attacks were the most common and most impactful cause of outages over the past two years.
• 75% of the surveyed organizations suffered ransomware attacks in 2023.

5. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

The ability to recover from disasters, whether cyberattacks, natural disasters, or other disruptions, is critical. The report indicates that many organizations struggle to meet service level agreements (SLAs) during disaster recovery tests.

• Within the last year, 58% of organizations met SLAs during data recovery tests.
• Only 32% of organizations can recover a 50-server site.
• 85% of organizations recover their DR servers from cloud copies of their data.
• Only 13% of organizations use orchestrated workflows for their failover mechanism when resuming functionality.

6. Employee Retention

The survey also revealed that 47% of employees in the data protection sector intend to change jobs outside their organization within the next twelve months, which is higher than the 33% of employees who are pretty confident they will retain their jobs.

• Caution: Losing data security experts leaves an organization vulnerable during an inevitable cyber event.
• Opportunity: Organizations should recruit new talent with skills to know how to protect modern clouds and prepare against cyber events.

How does Storware address the issues identified in Veeam’s 2024 Data Protection Trends Report?

Based on Veeam’s report, here’s how Storware Backup and Recovery can address some key findings:

Cloud-powered Protection: The report highlights a surge in cloud adoption for data protection (70% by 2026). Storware, if integrated with a cloud-based backup solution, can facilitate backing up data locally with Storware and then easily replicating or tiering it to the cloud for long-term storage and disaster recovery.

Modernizing Backups (54% seeking new solutions): Storware offers features like:

• Scalability: Storware scales to accommodate growing data volumes, potentially eliminating the need for an entirely new backup solution.
• Efficiency: Deduplication and compression can reduce storage requirements, making backups more efficient.
• Security: Integration with features like immutable backups can enhance data security against ransomware attacks, a growing concern according to the report.

Protection Gaps (27% of organizations acknowledge a gap): Storware can potentially help close this gap by:

• Supporting Diverse Workloads: Backing up a wider range of data sources, including physical, virtual, and cloud-based environments.
• Granular Recovery: Enabling granular restores of specific files or applications, minimizing downtime during recovery.

Conclusion

The “2024 Data Protection Trends Report” by Veeam Software provides valuable insights into the evolving data protection landscape. As cyber threats continue to escalate and the importance of data grows, organizations must prioritize robust data protection strategies.

Organizations can enhance their resilience and ensure business continuity by investing in advanced backup solutions, integrating cybersecurity features, and prioritizing disaster recovery.