Object Storage: How to Overcome Security Threats to Unstructured Data

Organizations face growing security risks from unstructured data. With the right strategies and tools, they can prepare to overcome these threats, shares Candida Valois, Field CTO for the Americas at Scality, discussing the use of object storage for smarter unstructured data threat management.

Most data today is unstructured: information that comes in multiple formats and deviates from traditional data models. Technologies like AI and machine learning (ML) require large amounts of unstructured data to work, and that data often takes the form of video, images, text, and voice. This creates storage and management challenges in a typical relational database. And it’s growing rapidly. In their white paper Meeting the new unstructured storage requirements for businesses undergoing digital transformationThe analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2025 80% of all data will be unstructured.

Along with the increased volume, unstructured data poses a greater security risk. While all industries are potential targets, the financial services and healthcare sectors are feeling the problem the most. To solve these problems, scalable and affordable object storage is now available.

Ransomware loves your unstructured data

Organizations collect a growing amount of data, including vast amounts of personal data from users. It needs to be stored and protected for a long period of time, which varies by industry. For example, if your business needs to be HIPAA compliant, that period is six years. In some circumstances, you need to store data for the life of your business. And it can’t be in a remote data lake; it must be accessible at all times – and of course secure.

Despite this, a majority (57%) of IT pros surveyed believe so, according to a study by the Enterprise Strategy Group between 20% and 50% of sensitive data that resides in the public cloud has poor security. Additionally, 61% say they either lost data in the cloud or suspect they may have.

As a company that collects sensitive data, you have a responsibility to protect it, especially as security risks escalate—which they seem to do all the time. Cyber ​​criminals aim to get hold of the data they know you need to keep. Because of this, ransomware is an if, not an if. A ransomware attack is predicted every two seconds until 2031. In addition, security events are becoming increasingly costly. A data leak costs now an average of $4.25 millionaccording to Ponemon 2021 Cost of a Data Breach Report.

Search for Libra

Of course, companies must understand the seriousness of this situation and act immediately. When looking for a storage solution that addresses these concerns, scalability is a key consideration to consider. You want a system that can meet your immediate and long-term needs, but also offers affordable data storage for the long haul.

Just like Spotify can’t work with an 8-track tape, traditional storage techniques don’t fit well in the cloud age. They lack the necessary scalability, resulting in expensive silo management. The public cloud offers scalability and agility, so you don’t need an internal data administrator. It’s fine for short-term data storage and some applications, but users don’t have much control over the infrastructure. Performance isn’t great, security issues arise, and cost-effectiveness diminishes over time. Although the cloud may seem like a bargain at first, it becomes more and more expensive as the organization grows; this is the infamous “cloud paradox”.

See more: Why object storage is key to the cloud operating model

Store objects in the cloud

Modern businesses want an affordable, secure solution that can scale as business needs change over the next five to 10 years to eliminate silos and encourage rapid innovation. Data must be accessible from both new and legacy cloud-based and cloud-native applications. When executed correctly, cloud object storage can offer the security, performance, and control advantages of the public cloud combined with those of an on-premises private cloud architecture. You can take advantage of all these benefits and still not need an on-site data administrator.

Look for cloud storage that has multiple layers of protection to prevent data from being accidentally modified, unavailable, corrupted, lost, destroyed, rewritten, or encrypted without your permission — which happens in ransomware attacks.

This type of data center cloud storage offers a unique balance of scalability, security, and speed. It grows with your needs. It is manageable, controllable and immutable. Immutability is considered essential in the fight against ransomware, but it also protects data from intentional or unintentional modification or deletion.

Immutability is enabled through support for the S3 Object Lock API. This feature makes recovering from ransomware and other disasters a breeze by ensuring the lowest recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). Essentially, S3 Object Lock applies an immutable retention period to data. During this time updating, changing or deleting the object is impossible. This feature has been used successfully in SEC compliance environments for financial service providers. Certification bodies such as Cohasset Associates have also given S3 Object Lock their blessing.

With object versioning, data immutability, and object locking, ransomware protection and recovery capabilities are now considered nearly bulletproof, and object storage is a leading data storage solution for mission-critical use cases.

Tape was once considered the best air-gap medium for isolating potentially sensitive data, such as data from local networks or manufacturing facilities. The situation has changed. Tape has a low cost per terabyte and a long lifetime, but its high cost of ownership makes it unsuitable for modern businesses. Immutable object storage that is S3 compliant is now the standard for cost-effective, air-gap security in the cloud.

Securing unstructured data

With the rapid growth of unstructured data content, object storage has become a common cornerstone of modern enterprise IT environments. Managing unstructured data is an issue that most IT departments will have to deal with at some point. With the right strategy and the right tools, you can prepare for this situation in advance. Your business needs solutions that don’t let your data “go missing” and aim to keep it accessible at all times. Although unstructured data can cause security problems, particularly those caused by ransomware, object storage can help you optimize the value and nature of your data. Object storage in the cloud is a critical component to solving today’s unstructured data problems.

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