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Importance of an Effective Cloud Disaster Recovery Strategy

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What Is Cloud Disaster Recovery?

To understand cloud disaster recovery, one must know what disaster recovery is. As the name suggests, it has everything to do with the aftermath of a disaster. Ideally, disaster recovery is the process where organizations prepare for disasters and are fully equipped to recover from them. Therefore, it is undoubtedly an integral part of any business and helps maintain business continuity for any organization. In addition, disaster recovery is focused on securing an organization’s assets. Hence, cloud disaster recovery plans are a group of procedures and measures that ensure an organization is functioning smoothly with the help of dedicated cloud service providers.

Understanding Why Cloud Disaster Recovery Is Important

Business continuity is an essential component for every functioning organization. A business that has a break in functioning due to a disaster can hamper almost everything. This is precisely where a cloud disaster recovery plan comes into action. Using the amount of flexibility available, cloud technologies vastly aid in efficient disaster recovery, irrespective of the intensity of the workloads. With data being stored in a secured cloud environment that is curated to provide high availability, managing and setting it up isn’t a humongous task.

The possibility of your business being affected by a disaster is never too small, and with the current rise in cyber-crime, is it worth the chance? Disaster recovery in cloud computing can help your business deal with ransomware, cyber-attacks, and other such disasters. These are threats that have the potential to completely destroy your files and present your business with a painful downtime.

Most organizations know the value and importance of having an effective disaster recovery plan, and if you don’t have one in place yet, you already have a late start. But it’s never too late to implement effective disaster recovery strategies and benefit from cloud-based solutions.

Understanding cloud disaster recovery benefits:
  • Offers great flexibility
  • Drastically reduces downtime
  • Provides reliability
  • Ensures simplification and efficiency
  • Easy to deploy
  • Highly cost-effective


How to Formulate an Effective Cloud Disaster Recovery Strategy?

With the help of cloud computing, disaster recovery has ideally become just another task that can be taken care of using some simple steps. Before formulating a cloud disaster recovery plan, it is suggested that you look into all the possible threats that might affect your organization. In the event of a disaster, you can figure out how much money will be needed and where your infrastructure is at risk by taking into account all the risk factors.

To effectively formulate a cloud disaster recovery strategy, it is best to follow the steps below:
  • Outline your possible risks and understand your infrastructure
  • Conduct a business impact analysis
  • Parameters of assessment:
  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
  • Establish a disaster recovery plan based on your RTO and RPO
  • Choose the right cloud partner
  • Focus on building your cloud disaster recovery infrastructure
  • Standardize your disaster recovery plan on paper
  • Constantly test your disaster recovery plan

As data security becomes more important, the global disaster recovery cloud services market has increased dramatically. It is predicted to grow from $4.35 billion in 2019 to $23.3 billion in 2027.88% of enterprises say the public cloud will play a role in their backup plans in the future.


Factors to Weigh While Assessing the Ideal Cloud Partner

Strategic cloud disaster recovery assessment and planning is something that not everyone can take up.Also, why stress on this when you can engagewith a provider with great experience. The right cloud partner should ideally help you conduct a thorough business impact analysis to aid in the familiarization of the potential operational limitations you would encounter during a disaster.

Hence, choosing a cloud partner who is intelligent, pragmatic, and solution-oriented should be of the utmost priority. Such a cloud partner will have all the necessary tools and help you carry out a better assessment of the potential danger to your data.

While formulating the cloud disaster recovery plan, keep in mind:
  • Design your strategy according to your recovery goals
  • Implement control measures
  • Prepare your software
  • Implement your security and compliance controls
  • Use cloud storage as your daily backup routine


Conclusion

In today’s age and time, disaster recovery should be a priority for every organization. While some calamities are unforeseen and highly impactful, successful organizations are always the ones that are capable of getting back up, and this is exactly where a cloud disaster recovery plan comes into action. Once you have assessed every aspect of your recovery strategy, you’d only have to pick the service provider who’s capable of implementing your requirements seamlessly. Once you have all these points in place, your business will be well equipped for almost any possible disaster.

Make ‘business continuity’ ‘business as usual’ and imbed it into your management routines as decisions are made, instead of an afterthought check off the box exercise later.”

Bobbie Garrett


FAQ

 

What Is a Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan?

Cloud-based recovery plans help the organization recover its critical systems after a disaster and also provideremote access to your system using a secure virtual environment.

 

Why Is a Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan Essential?

When an organization does not have an effective disaster recovery plan, it puts the organization at risk of high financial costs, reputation loss, and an even greater risk of losing clients and customers.


What Are the Benefits of Having an Effective Cloud Disaster Recovery Strategy?

Using a cloud disaster recovery strategy, organizations can benefit from:
  • Cost efficiency
  • ncrease employee productivity
  • Greater customer retention

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Sysdig Debuts New Benchmark for Cloud Detection and Response

Business Wire | November 03, 2023

Sysdig, the leader in cloud security powered by runtime insights, today released at SANS CyberFest 2023 the 5/5/5 Benchmark for Cloud Detection and Response, a new framework that outlines how quickly organizations should detect, triage, and respond to attacks in the cloud. Operating securely in the cloud requires a mindset shift in regard to time, and with that, cloud security programs need to hold themselves to a modernized benchmark: five seconds to detect, five minutes to correlate insights and understand what’s happening, and five additional minutes to respond. Recent findings by the Sysdig Threat Research Team published in the 2023 Global Cloud Threat Report note that, after discovering an exploitable target, malicious actors require less than 10 minutes to execute an attack. Cloud attacks are swift and sophisticated, requiring robust threat detection and response programs that move at the speed of the cloud. On-premises attacks take 16 days on average and antiquated frameworks challenge security teams to respond to a breach within 60 minutes, which is simply insufficient for the cloud. Bad actors are exploiting the automation and scale of the cloud, along with new techniques, to accelerate all stages of an attack and inflict damage within minutes. The 5/5/5 Benchmark guides organizations to detect and respond to cloud attacks faster than adversaries can complete them. The Challenge Detect threats within five seconds.Organizations should be able to gather detection signals from their cloud security tools in real time to ensure visibility into ephemeral assets. Correlate and triage within five minutes.Teams should be able to gather full context for all correlated signals within five minutes of receiving the first relevant alert. Initiate a response within five minutes.Organizations should be able to initiate a tactical response within five minutes of confirming that an attack is in progress. What people are saying People are always looking for security metrics, especially when the industry evolves into new operating models. We have plenty of 'best practices,' but no real way to quantify cloud security agility — until now, said Anna Belak, Director, Office of Cybersecurity Strategy at Sysdig. The 5/5/5 Benchmark, built in partnership with our customers, industry analysts, and the Sysdig Threat Research Team, sets a new standard for operating securely in the cloud. “As organizations move to the cloud, traditional on-premises security standards become outdated and too slow. In the cloud, both innovation and attacks happen quickly – companies need security tools, processes, and standards designed to operate at the speed of cloud-native environments,” said Phil Bues, Research Manager for IDC Cloud Security. “I don’t want to know 15 minutes after someone breached my system. I need to know instantly so that we can shut it down before the blast radius expands,” said Kuldeep Tomar, Head of Information Security at India’s leading digital skill games company and 5/5/5 Benchmark Advisor. “To move at the necessary speed, you need to not only be alerted to the right things, but also respond appropriately. Having a benchmark gives us a goal to hold ourselves to.” About Sysdig In the cloud, every second counts. Attacks move at warp speed, and security teams must protect the business without slowing it down. Sysdig stops cloud attacks in real time, instantly detecting changes in risk with runtime insights and open source Falco. Sysdig correlates signals across cloud workloads, identities, and services to uncover hidden attack paths and prioritize real risk. From prevention to defense, Sysdig helps enterprises focus on what matters: innovation. Sysdig. Secure Every Second.

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Cloud Security

Avanade Releases Avanade Cloud Impact to Save Up to 50% on Cloud Costs

Avanade | November 06, 2023

Avanade launches an AI-based platform, "Avanade Cloud Impact", to unlock up to 50% of cloud spend. The platform generates insights on IT estate risks and opportunities by analyzing cloud consumption patterns. Avanade offers a free cost optimization workshop to clients interested in adopting an AI-first approach. Avanade, a leading Microsoft solutions provider, launches a new platform, ‘Avanade Cloud Impact’, designed to help businesses establish an AI-ready digital core and unlock funding for innovation. The platform uses AI and machine learning to analyze industry, business, and technical data sources, providing tailored modernization insights for companies on their cloud journey. It has already saved Avanade clients up to 50% of their cloud spend. The platform works by analyzing cloud consumption patterns and comparing them with various data sources to generate insights on a wide range of risks and opportunities across an IT estate. These insights can include modernization recommendations and cost-benefit analyses. Avanade Cloud Impact can deliver information about data egress cost spikes, application redesign options, and achieve up to 50% cloud cost savings while quantifying sustainability benefits, all without the need to make any code changes. Andrew Stahel, Regional Applications and Infrastructure Solution Area Lead, Avanade Australia, emphasized the importance of AI in today's business environment and the need for businesses to rethink what the cloud can do for them. He expressed excitement about the potential of the Avanade Cloud Impact platform to help Australian businesses harness the true potential of AI by strengthening their digital core. Merrie Williamson, CVP, Azure Infrastructure, Digital and App Innovation, Microsoft, also expressed enthusiasm about the new platform and its ability to provide deep insights and recommendations that accelerate value for Azure customers. While Avanade's new platform, ‘Avanade Cloud Impact’, promises to unlock up to 50% of a business's cloud spend and provide tailored modernization insights, it does come with potential drawbacks. The platform's effectiveness is heavily dependent on the quality and accuracy of the data it analyzes, and incorrect or incomplete data could lead to misleading insights. Additionally, there may be a learning curve associated with understanding and effectively utilizing the insights generated by the platform. Furthermore, the platform might not be suitable for all types of businesses, particularly those with unique or complex cloud consumption patterns. However, the benefits of the platform are significant. It can lead to substantial cost savings and help businesses make informed decisions on their cloud journey. The use of AI and machine learning allows the platform to handle large amounts of data and provide comprehensive insights. Plus, Avanade offers a free introductory cost optimization workshop, providing additional support for businesses adopting an AI-first approach.

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