CYBERCRIMINALS ARE PROBING YOUR NETWORK

In the first blog topic, IDC explains that “Cybercriminals are constantly probing for vulnerabilities and will exploit anything they find. Most IT leaders are familiar with the tactics: Attackers use phishing or other schemes to gain entry to the systems.” Once these cyber-crooks get into your system, they can encrypt your data and demand ransom payments to release it.

Not only can data be encrypted, but according to IDC, data exfiltration is often used where “valuable or sensitive company data is stolen – copied – by the attacker, who demands a ransom not to sell it on the dark web or expose it publicly. Even worse, attackers will pull a ‘double ransom’ if they can, meaning they will exfiltrate the data and encrypt it. Pay twice or else.” An IDC survey revealed that only 31% of respondents were able to fully recover from a cyberattack without having to pay a ransom. A number of the attacks “compromised data backups to make recovery impossible.”

WHY BACKUPS ARE ATTACKED

What led to compromised backups? The survey respondents generally responded that there was “insufficient air gap.” What is air-gapped data? As described in a ransomware article, ”When a tape backup cartridge is removed from the tape drive, it is offline, isolated, and not accessible via online ransomware tactics. In essence, there is an air gap between the tape data and the system, preventing online access. In the event of an attack on online storage, the secured offline tape data can be used to recover.” IDC notes that “Cybercrime experts say that a sufficient air gap is the number one way to ensure attackers can’t compromise a backup.”

“LTO tape technology,” IDC describes, “has inherent and easily utilized attributes that can ensure data survival from encryption attacks and help thwart data exfiltration attacks. These include the industry best practices of air gap, encryption, and immutability.” There is much more to be gleaned from the IDC blog discussion to help protect data assets. See it here.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the IDC blog discussion on why many AI projects fail, and what you can do about it.

WHY DO AI PROJECTS FAIL?

In this second blog topic, according to IDC research, “fewer than one in five AI proof-of-concept projects resulted in an application that went into production.” Why so many failures? There can be several reasons, as described by IDC, “according to ChatGPT, the number one cause of failure is poor data quality, driven by insufficient data and data integration issues.” This is where LTO technology can play a pivotal role. IDC explains that “Many AI projects are data-intensive. The more data that can be fed into a learning model, the better the chance of having accurate AI output.” However, “most organizations are unable to simply store data indefinitely. The costs of disk storage capacity plus … storage management, floor space, and power-cooling are too high to make it practical.”

LARGE STORAGE AT LOWER COSTS

This is where LTO tape technology can make a powerful data saving cost impact. IDC describes that “there simply is no technology that can store data at a lower per-GB cost than tape.