Arcserve Southern Africa has revealed Arcserve – a leading provider of data protection and recovery software – ICT predictions for 2021.

Byron Horn-Botha, Arcserve Southern Africa Lead: Channel and Partnerships; says that while these are expectations rather than absolutes, they are important for the SA market because of the wealth of IP and market experience that Arcserve draws upon when calculating these estimates. 

“Cyberattacks affecting critical infrastructure will become the biggest threat to operations.  Moreover, understanding and protecting container data will be crucial,” says Horn-Botha. He adds most importantly organisations will need to rethink what and where data needs to be protected.

Arcserve predicts the following as its top picks for 2021 trends: 

• Infrastructure under attack:

Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and industrial control systems are increasing and will become one of the biggest threats to society in the next year as threat actors look to make their attacks more damaging. These attacks will be more devastating than attacks that solely compromise company data because they have the potential to disrupt critical operations like oil and gas. In 2021, targeting of these industries will be a major threat, so these companies must expand their data protection and security protocols to account for changes to their risk landscape.

• Container Data: 

As containers become more widely adopted, the role of data protection companies will also evolve – it will be up to them to show companies how to manage container data and why it’s important to understand where this data lives. In 2021, we can expect to see more partnerships between data protection companies and those using containers to guide implementation and help develop a solid data backup and protection plan for container data. 

• A rethink is needed: 

COVID-19 has forced many organizations to take a hard look at their data protection protocols, creating a greater need to protect workspaces that may have previously been deemed “not worth it,” including remote employee devices. Remote work isn’t going away anytime soon, so organizations will need to re-tier their data, systems, and applications in line with new vulnerabilities in 2021. More data will also be stored in the cloud than ever before, so companies will need to develop more robust plans that aggregate and protect distributed data.