Interview

Awareness about the Data Preservation Is Important 

Sameer Bhatia Director of Asia Pacific Consumer Business Group and Country Manager for SAARC & India, Seagate Technology

What are the challenges customers have during lockdown from storage point of view?

Remote working has become the new reality of business for the world today. A new, more connected world is emerging at a pace faster than anticipated. It’s a world that rides high on digital transformation and embraces it across every walk of life and business fuelled by data. Today, companies are leveraging data to improve customer experiences, open new markets, make employees more productive, processes seamless, and create new avenues of competitive advantage.

Businesses and users are also facing various challenges including data security, lack of data integration & data management, insufficient storage capacity and speed performance issues related to drives while working from home.  It can be inferred that with the continuous rise in applications and services, the demand for storage devices (hard disk drives, flash drives, SSD) is also bound to grow. Additionally, as more and more businesses are now moving from a client/server model to mobile or on cloud, we are looking at demand of up to 20TB data being deployed in the cloud for mass storage. According to IDC, there will be more data stored in the public cloud than in traditional data centers by 2021. IDC has also stated that the data generated by the digital transformation will grow to 175 zettabytes by the year 2025 – representing an increase of ten times from the 16ZB in 2016.

Data is created at three key locations – traditional and cloud data centers; enterprise-hardened infrastructure like cell towers and branch offices; and on the PCs, smart phones, and IoT devices. Thus, data created is further propelling the growth of global datasphere expansion and therefore, stemming the demand for data storage.

Additionally, awareness about the data preservation is important to protect the organizational information.  According to the organizers of World Backup Day, almost 30 per cent of users never backup their data which increases the chances of losing valuable information. An unanticipated accident could destroy important files, for instance when the devices are on the move. To safeguard the data, well-organized content with regularly planned backups helps in preserving the data on computer, phone and other devices. Recurring data backup helps in keeping the data secure throughout and provides easy access to the information as and when it is required. Additionally, it is important to know the capacity of data to be secured; hence, one should choose the right storage drives to backup the data.

[quote font=”tahoma” font_size=”13″ font_style=”italic” color=”#262626″ bgcolor=”#f9f9f9″]

“To protect data effectively, Seagate believes that well-organized content with planned regular backups can help efficiently store the data on computer, phone and other devices.”

Sameer Bhatia,
Director of Asia Pacific Consumer Business Group
and Country Manager for SAARC & India, Seagate Technology

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What are the security challenges that Seagate storage is solving along with storage?

Organization have adopted remote working as the new norm to maintaining their business continuity and it has proven to be an effective way to keep employee safe as well. However, working from home has also brought focus on the issue of cyber threats, especially due the fact that organizational data is being access over personal networks that not as secure as enterprise networks. Employees are now conducting virtual meetings with their peers using personal computers and smart phones. These devices aren’t integrated with the necessary security tools and antivirus, thereby increasing the risk of potential malware injection on the devices as well as corporate servers/cloud.

In order for the businesses to protect their data from the vulnerabilities, it is essential to store data on encrypted drives.  Seagate Secure™ self-encrypting hard drives protect data at rest and reduce IT drive retirement costs. Additionally, these drives keep the data safe even if the drives are misplaced.

Similarly, companies should look for Common Criteria accreditation for security features, and ensure every drive complies with the top industry standards for security. Seagate® has achieved Common Criteria accreditation for products such as Nytro®, Exos™ and BarraCuda® portfolio—these drives fulfill international-recognized regulations and offer a wide range of storage solutions to as per the demands of the enterprises.

Also, by following certain processes such as by using Secure Encrypted Drives (SEDs) to encrypt user data and locking data during transport, utilizing AES 256 encryption (ISO/IEC 18033-3) & hard drives that are Common Criteria certified. Following the (ISO/IEC 15408) standard and practicing end-of-life data erasure on devices can also help in protecting the sensitive data.

Seagate Secure devices offer two level services i.e. Essential and Certified, Essential features are available across all Seagate drives and Certified features are for government, healthcare, finance, and education industry.  Furthermore, businesses should test for secure remote infrastructure to ensure that they can support the expected increase in remote access. They should implement Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that can bypass geographic restrictions and are unaffected by intercepts.

What technology and services Seagate offering at this time?     What extra services Seagate is offering to the work from home customers?

With businesses rapidly adopting digital transformation and deploying AI powered applications and cloud services, large amount of data is being generated every second. Therefore, it becomes imperative for organizations to focus on data protection, storage and recovery. To protect data effectively, Seagate believes that well-organized content with planned regular backups can help efficiently store the data on computer, phone and other devices. Organizations should also evaluate how much data needs to be secured and what are the right storage drives to do so.

To help choose the right drive, here are a few tips businesses should keep in mind

Tip 1: Think Capacity

If the data is mostly in the form of text files or images/videos or a huge library of multimedia content, then Seagate Backup Plus Hub drive with up to 10TB of capacity would be the best fit. In case of less data storage requirement, a mobile drive such as Such as Barra Barracuda Fast SSD, Backup Plus Portable drives and One Touch SSD with 1-2TB of storage would be sufficient.

Tip 2: Ensure Easy Access 

Seagate caters to the requirements of a wide array of customers including student community, working professionals as well as entrepreneur and business owners who are always on-the-go. Customers and businesses can keep their important data accessible every time on a Seagate portable drive; however, we also advise them to backup their old data on the cloud or another backup drive so as to make more space for the new information.

Tip 3: Pair Fashion and Function

Seagate also offers a range of trendy hard drives such as One Touch SSD special editions, Backup Plus Slim or Special Edition game drives, which comes in bright and appealing colors and offer up to 5TB of data storage.

Tip 4: Speed Up Your Computer

Take your data to the next level of performance, reliability, and efficiency with internal solid-state drives. Those that come in both 2.5 SATA and M.2 2280 form factors, like our BarraCuda SSD solutions, are perfect for ultra -thin and ultra-small laptops, mini PCs, and desktop PCs that need next-level SSD speed for accelerated applications and multitasking.

Tip5: Safeguard the data

Seagate Instant Secure Erase renders all data on the hard drive unreadable in less than a second via a cryptographic erase of the data encryption key. So you can return, reuse or dispose of the drive securely; auto-Lock automatically locks the drive and secures its data the instant a drive is removed from a system, or the moment the drive or system is turned off.

Seagate has also introduced the enterprise Exos Systems Nytro Systems, offering a revolutionary modular approach to designing and deploying data center storage systems. These drives are specially engineered to move the data around enterprise, cloud and edge efficiently, offering a variety of storage solutions to fulfil the demands of public & private cloud providers, service providers and traditional data centres. The designed systems being modular in approach are easy to set up, maintain, and expand thanks to the interchangeable FRUs and hot-swappable components, including the controller. Even if users want to maintain large scale systems, the modular approach drastically simplifies the user experience with easily replaceable parts.

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