Implementing Data Protection Best Practices in the Cloud with Bocada

There is no question that organizations can reap strong benefits by migrating their IT infrastructures to the cloud. Increased speed, minimized overhead costs, and access to best-in-breed technology partners are just some of these advantages.

Yet the evolution toward cloud, or multi-cloud, infrastructures does not minimize the classic data protection challenges faced by on-premises solutions. In fact, the complexity of some of the latest solutions, coupled with their limited reporting capabilities, can mean organizations are choosing operational improvement gains over preserving the integrity and security of critical data.

Classic data protection issues faced in cloud architectures

While there are a variety of data protection challenges facing organizations moving to cloud architectures, three common issues frequently arise:

• Complexity: The more software and third-party solutions, the more complexity you bring into your environment. This includes everything from new GUIs and scripts to cross-platform data incompatibility issues. It often requires incremental in-house expertise as well as increased labor hours allocated to data protection oversight.
• Security and governance: With added complexity also comes lingering uncertainty that each tool is set up to comply with internal mandates or government regulations. There can be uncertainty that data is being backed up, not to mention whether it’s being backed up at the correct interval and across all your different backup and storage solutions.
• Exponential growth: Additionally, with multiple resources storing data in the cloud, organizations are still left with the age-old problem of managing growing data volume. Without streamlined reporting protocols, staying on top of backup data health and protection policies is a major challenge.

How CBTS overcomes cloud security challenges with Bocada

To ensure that cloud environments thrive, CBTS makes use of Bocada to implement automation initiatives that streamline monitoring, proactively identify cloud data protection risks, and mitigate the chance of human error.

Centralized monitoring under a single pane

Bocada allows us to automate the process of collecting raw backup and storage data across all cloud solutions and report on it all under a single dashboard. This even includes collecting data from on-prem solutions for customers leveraging legacy systems or migrating to hybrid-cloud environments.

While the data consolidation process is notoriously difficult due to each systems’ unique complexity, this automated approach overcomes complexity, drastically improving the time taken to begin reviewing backup performance and removing the human error that would exist with an otherwise manual approach.

Proactive cloud asset identification

Enterprise operations often lead to Azure or AWS assets being spun up quickly, often with no knowledge from the internal backup team. With no backup protection in place, these critical assets can be at risk to cyber or malware attacks.

However, by automating cloud asset oversight with Bocada, CBTS identifies in near-real time when assets are left unprotected. This gives our team the chance to proactively set up backup procedures with few gaps in data protection protocols.

Built-in alerting for critical failures and anomalies

A variety of factors can result in data not being backed up as expected. With large, complex systems, these factors can go undetected resulting in potential cloud data protection holes. That’s why we leverage built-in alerts. By being notified of everything from critical data not reaching expected backup thresholds or storage usage trending in unusual ways, we can quickly identify and address issues before they prevent data recoverability.

Optimized ticketing

Just as we look for ways to streamline our day-to-day backup monitoring, we similarly look for ways to streamline all aspects of operations tied to data health and protection. This is a key reason we integrate our backup operations with our ticketing systems. When backup issues are identified, we don’t have to wait for a team member to manually input a ticket. Instead, we use Bocada’s cross-platform automation for faster ticket creation and faster resolution, minimizing any possible gaps in the client’s cloud data protection.

Contact us to learn more about how CBTS delivers complete cloud data protection while ensuring you meet your compliance guidelines.