Every enterprise in the Middle East looking to build a strategy around modern data protection should keep the three important pillars in mind – cloud, security and containers. Businesses need to have a good understanding of what cloud brings to an organisation and why it is important. Secondly, before the pandemic, we had a centralised office where employees were all in one place. With decentralisation now, the boundaries of the organisation have become invisible. Data is all over the place, necessitating a need for a comprehensive security strategy to safeguard all entry points. And finally, we see an increased interest in Kubernetes as a critical piece of an enterprise’s cloud infrastructure. This has created a new area around container-native data protection that needs addressing.
Accelerated adoption of cloud technologies
Although cloud is not yet mainstream in the region, adoption is expected to witness significant growth in the Middle East as enterprises begin to “trust” in-country offerings with the big public cloud players like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services having opened data centers in the Middle East. Gartner forecasts end user spending on public cloud services in the MENA region to grow 19% in 2022. Another big trend we see is that many governments across the Middle East are creating their own ‘Government Cloud’ in order to have control over their data and not letting it reside in the public realm. With this acceleration, Veeam is investing in more headcount in the region to be able to assist organisations as they transition to the cloud.
Security – cybercrime
In the Middle East, security will always be a top priority. Not only can cyber-attacks affect day-to-day business, impact revenue, and create other problems, but above all, it affects the brand reputation and workforce. Enterprises will continue to invest and safeguard themselves against the ever-growing increase in cyber-attacks, especially ransomware. Although organisations in the Middle East in general spend a lot on security technologies, there is a huge gap when it comes to planning and executing a security strategy. This mainly boils down to the complexity of the IT environment. There are still a lot of legacy systems. Protecting these complicated environments is a big challenge and becomes even more so in the transition phase of moving to the cloud. Regional CISOs need to have a stringent security programme in place which includes important elements like stress testing of IT Systems, backups, a disaster recovery strategy and educating employees to become a first line of defense for improving organisational resilience
Security – data privacy and protection
In early September 2021, the UAE announced the introduction of a new federal data protection law. With this, data privacy and security are set to take centre stage as consumers demand transparency and their “right” to be forgotten. By having the option of opting out, consumers can ensure that their data is being handled in a correct way and they are not targeted by organisations. But more importantly international corporations that are based in the UAE and the Middle East can be assured that policies are being applied when it comes to data in-country – whether it be in terms of the way data is stored, IP is managed or how customer and consumer data is protected
Digital transformation powers ahead thanks to containers
The rapid adoption of Containers in enterprises, the need for on-demand resources, and the flexibility of workloads will drive digital transformation. The Lack of skilled resources and understanding around the technology is a big challenge for enterprises in the Middle East. Veeam, through its acquisition of Kasten, is simplifying container strategy and delivering the industry’s leading Cloud Data Management platform that supports data protection for container-based applications built in Kubernetes environments.
