The channel in 2023: security, safeguarding and spending

Cybercrime is on an upward trajectory, with ransomware posing a substantial threat to both individuals and businesses. The Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023 revealed that 73% of businesses in the UK and Ireland (UK&I) experienced at least one attack over the past 12 months, with as many as 18% suffering four or more.

As purse strings tighten and the technology industry faces pressure to reduce spending, one thing is clear, organisations cannot afford to reduce their cybersecurity spend. If they were to cut such budgets, they would struggle to manage the rising threat levels and run the risk of leaving themselves exposed to malicious actors. Fortunately, recent findings from market research firm Canalys predict that spending on cybersecurity services will increase by 14% to $144.5 billion this year, with larger enterprises and governments leading the charge. This supports Veeam’s finding that UK&I businesses plan to increase their data protection budget by 8.4% this year. With cybersecurity services set to become one of the biggest growth areas for the channel this year, this provides a significant opportunity for the channel ecosystem to work closely with end-user organisations to help them make investments that reinforce and enhance their overall security.

Plugging the protection gap

Modern businesses are interconnected organisms, and as such it’s vital they do all they can to protect themselves, their customers and partners, including adopting Modern Data Protection approaches. Vendors reliant upon the channel for success invest time developing the competencies and skills of their partners. Hence, making use of the channel ecosystem offers organisations access to incomparable expertise and insights that can help define their future approaches to data protection and find the modern solutions to perfectly suit their needs. There is clearly a need for enhanced data protection and security processes, as the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023 demonstrates a disconnect between how quickly a business needs its systems and data to be recoverable after an attack such as ransomware, and how quickly this happens in reality. Depressingly, this ‘Availability Gap’ was reported by 83% of UK&I firms. Leveraging the expertise of channel partners can help businesses better define their approaches to data protection. Deploying appropriate solutions that align with organisational recovery needs should reduce the Availability Gap, as well as its companion problem, the ‘Protection Gap.’ 81% of UK&I firms experience a Protection Gap between how much data a company can afford to lose in the event of an incident, including a cyberattack, compared with how frequently IT protects its data. Implementing secure, immutable backups in line with the 3-2-1-1-0 rule (which states that two copies of the data should be stored on two different media, one being offsite, one offline, air-gapped or immutable, all with zero errors) is a key aspect of defence against ransomware. The Veeam Ransomware Trends Report 2022 found that 88% of ransomware attacks in EMEA targeted backup repositories last year. With 74% of these attempts being successful, this proves the need for the enhanced data protection capabilities that channel partnerships can provide.

The value of channel expertise

The channel ecosystem gives businesses access to unrivalled expertise and knowledge. Each network contains a mix of various partner profiles and roles, such as cloud and service providers, SIs, VARs and more. The benefit of this is that no data protection challenge a business is facing will be new,

and there will be the expertise available to solve it. Gartner has predicted a 2.4% increase in global IT spending this year, with IT services spend set to grow by 5.5% in light of the challenging labour market. WEF research supports this, revealing that 59% of global organisations find it difficult to respond to cybersecurity incidents due to skills shortages within their teams, with the cybersecurity skills gap widening by 26.2% last year. This lack of expertise is making it harder for organisations to identify threats, and put adequate data and cyber protections in place, as well as increasing their risk and likelihood of suffering security breaches, and compromising recovery. Fortunately, in recognition of these challenges, UK&I businesses told Veeam that they intend to spend 8.4% more on their data protection budgets too.

Channel expertise can be critical in ensuring this increased spend is invested correctly to help client organisations meet their businesses needs for enhanced cybersecurity and resiliency. Partners are able to help fill talent gaps with relevant expertise, offering organisations the freedom to outsource an increased percentage of their security requirements and focus on other business priorities, with the peace of mind that their data is protected. Better still, their experience helps IT leaders identify the optimum solutions for their needs, whatever infrastructure(s) their data runs across.

Partnering for security and efficiency in 2023

In a multifaceted, interconnected world, vendors and channel partners must work together so that their customers are able to use every tool at their disposal to ensure the ongoing resilience, security and recoverability of their data and infrastructure. Skills shortages, budget cuts and economic uncertainties are preoccupying the minds of many business leaders. However, with cyberthreats like ransomware that are not a matter of ‘when’ or ‘if,’ but ‘how often’ businesses will be targeted, they can’t afford to take their eye off the ball when keeping up with the expanding threat landscape. Anticipating threats and ensuring immediate, fast recovery from a secure, immutable backup is a vital defence against ransomware. Channel partners expertise is also invaluable in building solutions that enable businesses to close their data protection, availability and skills gaps.

Ransomware, including prevention and remediation, is the biggest hindrance to digital transformation and IT modernisation for almost 40% of UK&I businesses, according to Veeam’s research. Channel partners can help relieve this burden, by positioning themselves as strategic technology partners, focused on driving digital transformation initiatives that will help businesses improve their operational efficiency. Alongside helping clients to modernise their production environments, they can help them modernise data protection too. Leading them to solutions that can manage all workloads, whether cloud, virtual, physical, SaaS, Kubernetes or a mix, enabling them to break free from legacy backup arrangements or vendor lock-in.

Such data freedom brings agility, a key factor for innovation and growth – for the channel and customers alike. Thus, not only does the right data protection solution thwart the cyber attacker, and protect loss of customers, profits or reputation – it can help build them up too.