As the pandemic continues to impact businesses all over the world, new challenges have emerged for business leaders - particularly in the retail and consumer sectors of the market. At Rubrik, we partner with leading global system integrators and delivery partners to solve the most difficult challenges enterprises face in these verticals.
While adjusting to the new normal can be difficult for businesses, implementing the right solutions, and choosing the best partners makes this process much simpler.
Adapting Data Protection to New Behaviors
Retail and consumer enterprises are rapidly transforming, while their customers adapt to new market changes dictated by consumer preferences and expedited by the current pandemic. Consumer behaviors have been shifting over the past two decades as people incorporate the convenience of online shopping into their daily lives. The current pandemic has accelerated the pace of these changes based on consumer buying habits in addition to accelerating enterprise IT transformation. In my own daily life, the current pandemic has changed my buying habits, using online purchases and curbside pickup regularly. These services existed prior to the pandemic, but now provide a heightened level of convenience, from a time and safety perspective.
Companies have shifted to a “hybrid approach”, offering online and in-person purchasing methods in the same way their IT groups consume services within their own data centers and in the public cloud. We have seen that retail and consumer enterprises have a large data footprint, including corporate data centers, on-site in brick and mortar stores, in the public cloud, or on servers housed in global sales offices, distribution centers, and factory stores.
Whether this is done purposefully or in response to demand, it creates a unique environment concerning how to best protect data from being exposed. With a large data footprint and evolving data privacy regulatory requirements, there is an increased possibility of exposure due to employee and system error, as well as the rapidly growing malware attacks.
With data and its control dispersed across multiple sites, legacy data protection solutions leave a company vulnerable at multiple points.
Rubrik has developed a modern hybrid cloud solution that helps companies identify issues, instantly recover, and provide protection no matter where the data resides.
Preparing for Downtime and Attacks
A consistent concern found across IT teams, executives and their boards of directors is the need for protection against malicious system attacks, coupled with a comprehensive plan to restore data.
In this current landscape, consumer and retail companies are highly dependent on their brand recognition to drive consumer acquisition and loyalty. If the company’s systems are down or sensitive data is compromised, there is potential to lose customers and pay hefty fines.
Systems can go down for a variety of reasons, including:
Human error. The likelihood of an employee error is increased for enterprise-level businesses with a multitude of employees in branch locations following different processes and procedures.
Power or system outages. An outage in just one location can spell disaster if there is no plan in place to handle this quickly. Having a backup and recovery plan gives employees a set way to respond in case of an outage and minimizes the time it takes to get the system up and running again.
Ransomware or malware attacks. During the Covid-19 pandemic, ransomware attacks have become more frequent and sophisticated. Bad actors are embedding malware into emails that target coronavirus related keywords, by correctly assuming people are more interested in these subjects. This trend shows no sign of slowing, as malicious attacks are often successful when perpetrated against businesses with employees that are not adequately prepared.
The financial impacts of downtime can be substantial, even if they only last for a few minutes. Today’s consumer doesn’t want to wait for the products or services they need and will be quick to go to a competitor instead of waiting for you to come back online. I have experienced the frustration of trying to buy something from a retailer’s website and lost interest after their systems were slow to load. With a recovery plan in place, you can minimize the average length of downtime in your business.
Conclusion
The shift in consumer purchasing behaviors has continued to evolve, just like IT systems. Retail and consumer companies have a large data estate. Rubrik has partnered with leading Global System Integrators and Service Delivery Partners that have deep experience in successfully delivering digital transformation, in addition to understanding the unique challenges of the retail and consumer vertical. Joining together, we help countless customers in this space provide a method for instant recovery of critical systems and applications, fast ransomware recovery from outages and attacks, and simplify the protection of disparate data sources.
Want to learn more about Hybrid Cloud Management? Check out my other blog with our trusted partners.
