Veritas Technologies has released the findings of a new study that shows that many UAE enterprises are racing ahead with the adoption of Kubernetes in mission-critical environments.
According to the research, 88% of UAE businesses expect to use the technology within the next two to three years, with a third already doing so. However, the majority are unprepared to deal with the threat to their Kubernetes environments: only 35% of UAE businesses that have deployed Kubernetes so far have tools in place to protect against data-loss incidents like ransomware.
The research, which surveyed 1,100 senior IT decision makers from the UAE and around the world, discovered that 67% of UAE organizations that had deployed Kubernetes had already experienced a ransomware attack on their containerised environments, and an astounding 85% of UAE respondents said that ransomware attacks on Kubernetes environments are an issue for their businesses today.
Johnny Karam, Managing Director & Vice President of International Emerging Region at Veritas, said: “Kubernetes offers a world of benefits for businesses – it’s affordable, flexible, scalable and really easy to deploy – so it’s no wonder UAE enterprises are embracing containerisation. Unfortunately, this can mean it’s really easy for organisations to surge ahead faster with their Kubernetes implementation than their Kubernetes protection. Suddenly, they’ve found themselves with over two-thirds of their mission-critical Kubernetes environments completely unprotected from data loss. Although the benefits of Kubernetes are vast, protection measures must keep pace so that Kubernetes doesn’t become the Achilles heel in businesses’ ransomware defence strategies.”
Almost all (99%) UAE respondents believe that taking an integrated approach to protecting their at-risk data sets by extending their existing data protection from traditional workloads out across their containerised environments has benefits. However, only 29% of UAE organizations are currently using this model, with the remainder complicating their protection environments by using stand-alone products for some or all of their Kubernetes protection. This could be because nearly half of respondents (47%) said they know little or nothing about solutions for data protection in traditional, virtual, and Kubernetes environments.
The research identified the biggest risks associated with siloed data protection solutions as “higher costs of deploying multiple solutions” and “an increased likelihood of data being missed from protection sets.” Meanwhile, respondents’ most compelling reasons for adopting a single solution to protect data against data loss and ransomware attacks were ‘cost savings over deploying multiple solutions’ and’reduced likelihood of data being missed from protection sets’.
According to the findings, UAE businesses expect to achieve better protection of their Kubernetes environments over time, with 36% of organizations believing that ransomware will not be an issue here in five years. This corresponds to increased spending on containerized data protection. Companies in the UAE expect to spend 62% more in this area in five years than they do now, leaving less than 6% without data protection in place for their mission-critical Kubernetes environments. In the next five years, 66% of UAE organizations expect future investments in their security infrastructures to leave them “very well prepared” for ransomware attacks on Kubernetes environments.
Karam continued: “Our research shows that UAE organisations clearly understand the value of protecting the mission-critical data that they’re using in their Kubernetes environments. It’s reassuring to see that they are on the right path to full protection. However, a lot can happen in five years, especially in the fast-moving cybercrime world, where sophisticated ransomware variants can emerge over that time to target Kubernetes and exploit this vulnerability while it exists. To ensure they don’t leave themselves open to attack, organisations should take advantage of the opportunity to consolidate their current data protection platforms to cover their Kubernetes environments today, along with all other data wherever it resides.”
To learn more, visit www.veritas.com/solution/kubernetes.
