EDITOR ’ S QUESTION

BRIAN DUNAGAN , VICE PRESIDENT OF

ENGINEERING , RETROSPECT

• Keeping their fingers on the pulse of the market to identify opportunities where technological innovation can improve their organization and help prepare it for the future

• Within their group , they must encourage creative thinking and new ideas

• Within the C-suite and organizational leadership , they must foster an environment in which change is embraced and not feared

While most would prefer to affect change on their schedule , sometimes market conditions dictate otherwise . For instance , organizations have had no choice but to face the fact that ransomware has and will continue to change the threat landscape .

This is not news to CIOs , they fully recognize that it is inevitable that at some point most will suffer a failure , disaster or cyberattack .

However , given the world ’ s economic and political climate , the majority have pushed their ability to detect and recover from a malicious ransomware attack to the top of their priority list . And many times , this can require change , such as amendments to procedures and deployed technologies .

The most significant change is beyond just protection . Organizations must be able to detect ransomware as early as possible to ensure their ability to remediate and recover in the event of a successful attack . A backup solution that includes anomaly detection to identify changes in an environment that warrants the attention of IT is a must .

Organizations must be able to tailor anomaly detection to their business ’ specific systems and workflows , with capabilities such as customizable filtering and thresholds for each of their backup policies . And , those anomalies must be immediately reported to management , as well as aggregated for future ML / analyzing purposes .

Of course , the next step after detecting the anomaly is providing the ability to recover . This is best

CIOs must help their organizations to understand that an investment in innovation is an investment in their employees .

accomplished with an immutable backup copy of data which makes certain that the data backup cannot be altered .

To remain an effective agent of change , CIOs must ensure that their organizations realize that if they choose to remain in their comfort zone , they will eventually find it difficult to remain relevant to their customers . Instead , CIOs must help their organizations to understand that an investment in innovation is an investment in their employees , an investment in their customers and an investment in their organization ’ s future .

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