Nakivo 2021 Facts and 2022 Predictions  

By Sergei Serdyuk, VP product management, Nakivo, Inc.

2021 Facts and 2022 Predictions  

Top 3 Facts of 2021: 

1. The rise of ransomware 
2021 saw major cyberattacks hitting medium, large businesses and government agencies around the world. Major cyber attacks took place every month since February 2021, with attackers demanding millions of $s from their victims and ransom demands breaking records. According to Statista, 68% of organisations were affected by ransomware to some extent. So far, 2021 has seen the highest number of attacks compared to previous years.
2. The on-going adoption of cloud 
2021 saw the cloud, mainly related to the enterprise sector, enjoying strong growth. Enterprise cloud storage, which just a decade ago was looked down upon as unreliable and risky, now offers a range of data protection features on par with dedicated solutions. This is not to say that hardware is taking a back seat – the recent ransomware surge may well mean that niche solutions like detachable drives may become a mainstay incorporating data protection strategies.
3. Global adoption of data-generating technologies  
Perhaps anticlimactically, the biggest factor affecting the storage market has been the on-going adoption of data-generating technologies throughout the world. Many industries have been waking up to the benefits of IoT devices, and there’s no reason to expect this trend to reverse anytime soon. At the same time, the past year saw regulatory agencies worldwide recognise the importance of data protection and put forward increasingly strict requirements, driving up the demand for reliable backup management.  

Top 3 Predictions for 2022: 

1. Organisations will adopt Intelligent security and increased visibility into threat landscape to combat cybercrime  
Hackers are now tapping into advanced technologies in order to more easily penetrate businesses and keep up with corporations’ increasing efforts to improve data protection. In response, in 2022 organisations will look into intelligent security technologies and capabilities enabling visibility into the threat landscape to identify new vulnerabilities to swiftly address them before disaster strikes.
2. Hybrid cloud to be the new normal  
The hybrid cloud model, combining private and public cloud computing to enable greater flexibility, will see continued adoption in 2022. This relatively new trend of integration between on-premise and cloud environments is providing a new path for businesses that is both promising and daunting. The new era of cloud integration has brought with it considerable management difficulties in balancing and integrating the new model and has proven to be a challenging task. Hybrid cloud also demands more comprehensive security administration to improve data protection policies and avoid potential breaches. However, with the strong drive to maintain BC, companies will aim to effectively address these challenges in 2022.
3. Organisations will better adapt to emerging data protection regulations  
Due to new data protection and data privacy regulations being introduced globally, businesses will put processes in place to help them ensure compliance and better adapt to the fast-changing international data protection laws, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation.