CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks, David Trossell, features in June issue of GPSJ Magazine to discus the risks and solutions for successful backup strategies.
June 2025
Backing up data is an essential practice in the digital age, ensuring that vital information is preserved and can be restored in the event of data loss. Data can be lost due to hardware failures, cyberattacks, accidental deletion or natural disasters.
“Without backups, organisations put their ability to operate, the finances, their customer and partner relationships at risk, so it is always better to invest in solutions that enable an ability to back up and restore data rapidly – increasing the opportunity more for service continuity than disaster recovery,” explains David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks.
It’s very important time to back up data, too. Data volumes in 2024 rose to 149 zettabytes, and it’s set to rise by the end of this year – 2025 – to 181 zettabytes. Reports suggest that this growth is driven by the Internet of Things devices, real-time data processing, cloud-based storage, and generative AI is also having an impact.
Drivers of data growth
Rivery – a platform that helps build data pipelines – enables companies to manage their data and integrate it with their systems more efficiently. On its website, it states:
“Artificial intelligence is a key driver of data growth, with systems continuously generating, processing and manipulating vast datasets. Machine learning algorithms, natural language models and generative AI tools produce large volumes of data during training and real-world operations. Apps like automated content creation, recommendation systems, and AI-driven analytics rely on constant feedback loops to improve accuracy and functionality- amplifying this process.”
IDC also reports that these global data volumes, which have been generated within the past 2 years, are set to double every 4 years, with 90% of the world’s data being created only within the last couple of years.
Worryingly, IT support services firm AAG IT Services, in its ‘The Latest 2025 Cyber Crime Statistics (updated April 2025)’ report by Charles Griffiths, points out that 50% of UK businesses experienced some form of cyber-attack in 2023.
Average data breach cost
The average cost of a data breach to businesses was $4.88 million in 2024. The report also says that around 1 in 10 US organisations have no insurance against cyber-attacks. Real estate investment trust, Workspace Group, adds that around 96% do not back up their workstations. Studies also suggest that many of the organisations that do have backup plans were often found to have inadequate or flawed backup practices, which can lead to significant data losses.
With many organisations failing to have a recovery process or, more to the point – a service continuity plan – Workspace Group warns that “93% of organisations without a recovery plan face the threat of going out of business within a year following a major data disaster.”
Trossell therefore warns: “While backups can fail, which may be due to poor practices and policies, or using the wrong technologies to back up data, it is essential to undertake regular backups and to have disaster recovery as well as service continuity in place. This is to protect each and every organisation from failures to comply with data protection and privacy regulations; and to forestall any threat to their existence.”
“I suggest that you try and work in the theory that your backup process should be designed around your recovery requirements,” he adds.
WAN Acceleration and security
Regular backups, enhanced by WAN Acceleration and stringent cyber-security, mitigate these risks by creating copies of data that can be retrieved rapidly when needed. Trossell says the key factor in ensuring a successful backup strategy is the ability to also mitigate the effects of latency and packet loss. WAN Acceleration, which is not to be confused with WAN Optimisation, enables this – and encrypted data can be transmitted and received rapidly and securely.
That’s what WANop just can’t do. Trossell explains: “WAN Optimisation just doesn’t live up to expectations: To send and receive data, it can’t be encrypted; you have to have the keys at each end to unencrypt it before transmission.”
“WAN Acceleration solutions, such as PORTrockIT, use artificial intelligence and machine learning to mitigate the effects of latency and packet loss, as well as data parallelisation to agnostically send encrypted data over thousands of miles, achieving 98% bandwidth utilisation. To date, nothing else on the market surpasses its performance.”
Even SD-WANs are boosted with a WAN Acceleration overlay and, while it’s tempting to save money on backup solutions by backing up data to, for example, just one cloud storage facility – and with prevention being better than a cure – there is a need to back up data in at least three different locations and clouds.
This ensures that, no matter what the cause of a data breach or downtime, organisations can maintain service continuity and avoid data breach lawsuits and fines. Ideally, each disaster recovery site should be located outside of each one’s circles of disruption – both onsite and offsite with an airgap to protect the most sensitive data.
Cloud vulnerabilities
Trossell says that while cloud-based backups offer additional security, they also have their own weaknesses. For example, because they operate 24/7 over the course of each year, they are increasingly prone to cyber-attacks. It’s worth noting that cloud backups are cheaper than backing up data on-premise, but their lack of separation, shared responsibility the potential for attacks on cloud infrastructure and interfaces makes them significantly vulnerable. Attackers exploit their vulnerabilities to gain unauthorised access, encrypt data or disrupt services.
With GDPR fines for serious data breaches equating to 4% of a company’s global annual turnover or up to €20 million – whichever is greater – and lesser fines for less serious breaches equating to 2% of annual global turnover or €10 million, organisations avoid backing up data at their peril. Corporations, in particular, need to watch out because Meta has received one of the highest GDPR fines to data of €1.2 billion. So, whether you’re a public or private sector organisation – large or small – Trossell advises you to back up your data regularly, and in real-time where possible.
Marks & Spencer attacked
The future is uncertain for the organisations that fail to protect their data in this digital age, concludes Trossell. When an organisation works with a third-party provider, such as Marks & Spencer does, it’s also vital to ensure that their systems and cyber-security practices are both in place and secure, particularly as the number of attacks and their sophistication is expected to increase with the growing use of artificial intelligence to launch cyber-attacks. However, not all attacks are the same, and some of them will be launched using other methods of attack.
M&S found itself the target of ransomware group Scattered Spider in April 2025. The cyber-criminals gained access to the retailer’s systems by using the login credentials of two employees from their business partner, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). While there are thoughts that social engineering played a role in the attack, Cybernews.com says it caused system-wide shutdowns, customer data theft, thousands of cancelled online orders and empty shelves across hundreds of stores. To avoid this disruption, Trossell advises that it still pays to back up data.
Click here to read the article on pages 22-23 on Government Public Sector Journal (GPSJ).
