Why Standardization Across Hybrid IT Environments Improves Data Protection

As businesses increasingly adopt multicloud hybrid environments, data protection becomes more challenging. By nature, multicloud and hybrid environments expand the potential attack surface, opening new vectors through which threats can infiltrate. This increased exposure requires heightened vigilance and more robust security measures.

Standardized data protection policies help to ensure that all data, regardless of location, is protected under robust security measures. In multicloud and hybrid environments, where complexity is heightened, standardization becomes even more necessary.

Yet, in a recent survey of IT decision-makers we conducted in partnership with Foundry, we found that standardized data protection policies improve an organization's security posture. Organizations with a global protection policy reported experiencing fewer incidents, and a higher percentage reported no incidents compared to those without a standardized data protection policy.

Yet, despite the clear advantages standardization can offer, over one-third (36%) of organizations surveyed indicated they still lacked a global protection policy.

So why haven't more businesses adopted a global protection policy?

Challenges of Standardizing across Multicloud and Hybrid Setups

Standardizing security measures across multicloud and hybrid environments presents a complex set of challenges. The intricate process of implementing uniform encryption and access controls across diverse platforms often leads to errors and misconfigurations. Additionally, the varying compliance standards of different cloud providers add significant difficulty in maintaining consistent regulatory adherence. This issue is particularly acute in highly regulated sectors such as healthcare and finance, where stringent data protection laws mean that non-compliance can result in hefty penalties.

Further complicating the landscape is the lack of standardization in APIs, data formats, and management tools among cloud services, which hampers seamless integration and consistent security practices. The specialized skills required to manage security in multicloud environments are also in high demand, leading to a shortage of qualified professionals.

These challenges are a major factor in why many organizations have not yet implemented a comprehensive global protection policy. However, despite these hurdles, the benefits of standardizing data protection measures across an organization make the investment of time, effort, and resources worthwhile.

Benefits of a Unified Global Protection Policy

A unified global protection policy standardizes data protection across all regions and departments, simplifying security and compliance management in multicloud and hybrid environments. In addition, enterprises with a global protection policy feel they are better aligned between provisioning vs. demand, according to our survey.

Other benefits include:

• A consistent security posture: A global policy establishes uniform security measures across all cloud providers and on-premises infrastructure, minimizing vulnerabilities and ensuring a consistent defense against threats.
• Streamlined compliance management: A unified policy aligning with global regulations allows organizations to efficiently demonstrate compliance with various data protection laws and industry standards, reducing administrative burden and complexity.
• Enhanced operational efficiency: Implementing a single, global policy simplifies the management of security protocols, thereby reducing the likelihood of breaches

Improved visibility and control over data handling practices, easier policy updates and enforcement, and better incident response are additional advantages of a global protection policy. Moreover, maintaining a single set of global policies is more cost-effective than managing multiple, region-specific policies, reducing administrative overhead and resources required for training and compliance monitoring.

Finally, a consistent global policy simplifies training and communication, ensuring employees understand and adhere to data protection guidelines, reducing human error risk, and enhancing security culture. Standardized policies facilitate smoother transitions and integrations between different environments, ensuring consistent security measures during migrations.

How a Centralized Backup Solution Makes Standardization of Data Protection Easier

A single, centralized backup solution can make it much easier to standardize security across hybrid and multicloud environments. According to our research, organizations with a global protection policy are more than five times as likely to utilize a single consolidated backup solution compared to those without such a policy.

This centralized approach offers numerous advantages:

• Unified management interface: A single Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) console for managing backup and recovery operations simplifies administration and ensures consistency across all environments.
• Consistent security measures: A centralized platform can support uniform security protocols, such as encrypted backups and configurable backup data immutability.
• Simplified compliance management: A single solution can unify reporting and audit trails, making it easier to maintain compliance with various regulations and industry standards.
• Improved visibility: Comprehensive insights into backup status, data protection coverage, and potential vulnerabilities are all in one location.
• Scalability: As organizations adopt new cloud services or expand infrastructure, a single solution can seamlessly extend protection.
• Integrated local and cloud protection: By managing Cloud Protection Store (CPS) and Integrated Local Protection Stores (ILPS), in a single solution, data protection architecture is simplified.
• Protection for diverse workloads: It becomes easier toprotect a wide range of workloads from a single solution and enables comprehensive data protection across all environments.
• Automated policy enforcement: A single solution with automation features can help to automate global protection policy applications, reducing human error risk and ensuring consistent compliance and security measures.
• Streamlined disaster recovery: A single consolidated backup solution can speed the disaster recovery processes by enabling faster and more consistent recovery across all environments.

Standardizing data protection policies across hybrid environments is essential for maintaining a consistent security posture, simplifying compliance, and enhancing operational efficiency. Using a centralized backup solution like HPE GreenLake can facilitate this standardization, providing numerous benefits and ensuring robust data protection across a multicloud and hybrid environment.

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