Kathy Gibson is at Dell EMC Partner Summit in Cape Town – In the era of digitalisation, with data becoming more pervasive than ever before, it is key to ensure that data is protected.

The problem, says Servaas Venter, DPS sales lead at Dell EMC, is compounded by the fact that IT is getting more and more complicated – and their data volumes are growing exponentially.

On top of this, that data is becoming more distributed, adding to the risk of cyber-attack.

Data protection today needs to embrace the physical and virtual environment, and also plan for next-generation technologies.

But customers don’t have a single vendor approach, which makes it even more difficult to cover their whole environment.

What IT needs is data protection everywhere, Venter says.

Ransomware is top of mind, particularly following a series of high-profile attacks in recent months.

Typically, in ransomware attacks, hackers tend to target the backup servers first. “If there is an issue, the company will go to their backup, so these systems are disabled first,” Venter says.

What companies need to do is to copy their data and back it up over an “air gap” that keeps it completely separate from the production systems and much more secure as a result.

Dell EMC offers storage, software and appliance protection, Venter explains. The company’s products are best of breed and fully integrated so they can be used in whichever environment the customer runs.