By Modeen Malick, Principal Systems Engineer at Commvault

Recent cyberattacks on various organisations, including South African government departments, are a stark reminder that cybercriminals increasingly target public and private sector organisations. This underscores the critical importance of robust data management and cybersecurity. Unfortunately, many organisations in both sectors face challenges due to underinvestment in security systems and outdated technology. This, combined with the large amounts of valuable and sensitive data that private and public sector organisations hold, makes them attractive targets for cyberattacks.

While both sectors are vulnerable to attacks, public sector organisations are more likely to be targeted as government typically invests less in cybersecurity compared to private sector organisations. The potential consequences can be dire for both public and private sector organisations if they fail to enhance their data management and cybersecurity infrastructure. The most evident consequence of a data breach is financial loss, due to unplanned downtime and disruption of operations. Beyond financial loss, and arguably even more severe, is the risk of suffering reputational damage as a result of an attack. This can erode customer trust and have a long-term impact on revenue.

The evolving threat landscape

While most organisations embrace regulatory compliance that is designed to protect sensitive data, it is the data environment itself that is becoming increasingly challenging to secure, as it is constantly growing and becoming more complex.

Advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven solutions can assist organisations in defending against cyber threats. Today, traditional data management companies are partnering with AI specialists to roll out AI-driven solutions that help organisations leverage data insights that facilitate threat detection, protection and mitigation methods and data recovery.

Due to the evolution of the threat landscape, leading data management companies are diversifying and collaborating with partners such as Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) companies or Security, Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) partners to provide threat detection and assessment solutions. This can be further bundled with incident management and a layer of data governance and privacy.

To create effective cyber resilience, these data security products must be able to integrate with products in the broader cybersecurity ecosystem. This will not only meet the needs of customers but also help to bring faster, smarter and more connected security insights to all organisations, whether in the public or private sectors.

In today's digital landscape, it is imperative to prioritise robust cybersecurity measures and IT modernisation due to organisations’ IT environments becoming increasingly complex, with potential attacks becoming more sophisticated. As such, business leaders are driving strategic cyber resilience efforts to put their business continuity and data recovery needs at the forefront of their cyber preparedness.

Traditional methods no longer suffice

As a result, traditional IT budgets have shifted. While replication from a data protection perspective used to be considered the most reliable disaster recovery measure, the rapid advancement of technology means it is no longer sufficient to only safeguard against data loss.

Today, recovering from a cyberattack is more complex than simple data recovery. It involves restoring not only the compromised or lost data but also the systems and applications affected by the attack. This process can be time-consuming and challenging due to the vast amounts of data that need to be recovered. An effective data protection strategy must now align with the intricacies of a modern IT landscape, as organisations must implement solutions that go over and above the traditional.

However, despite organisations investing heavily in security tools, bad actors still profit from damaging and exploiting businesses and their critical data, whether it is in the public sector or the private sector.

Organisations need to therefore adopt a more proactive approach to identifying risks and defending their data. Ultimately, they need to be able to effectively identify the risk while bracing for the impact of an inevitable breach, thus minimising the blast radius and impact of the attack.