How are organisations in the Middle East evolving their approach to data protection as cyber threats and data complexity continue to increase?
Middle East organisations are prioritising data protection for business resilience rather than simply considering it as an IT backup function. As cyber threats, cloud adoption, and data complexity grow, companies are investing in immutable backups, isolated recovery environments, and regularly tested disaster recovery plans. The strongest investments are coming from government, banking and financial services, oil and gas, healthcare, and telecommunications sectors, where regulatory compliance and critical infrastructure protection are key priorities.
What does “recovery readiness” mean in today’s world, and how can businesses move beyond traditional backup strategies?
Recovery readiness encompasses restoring clean, trusted, business-critical data quickly and confidently after any disruption. Backups alone are not enough today; organisations must be able to recover data within required timelines. This requires immutable or isolated backups, automated verification, clear recovery objectives, regular testing, and role-based access controls. In this environment, frameworks like the 3-2-1-1-0 strategy provide a practical foundation for building resilient, cyber-ready data protection.
With the rapid adoption of AI, what new challenges are emerging around data governance, storage visibility, and recovery planning?
As organisations adopt AI, they face new challenges around data governance, storage growth, and visibility. Today, customers need to identify, protect, and govern data used for AI training and inference while meeting data sovereignty requirements. Key concerns include rapid unstructured data growth, limited visibility into AI data locations, protecting datasets and models through reliable backup and recovery, and ensuring fast restoration to minimise disruption to AI-driven operations.
How can enterprises balance the growing need for data sovereignty with the flexibility offered by hybrid and cloud environments?
Enterprises can balance data sovereignty and cloud flexibility by adopting a hybrid strategy built on data classification, governance, and control. In the Middle East region, many organisations keep critical and regulated data on-premises or in local private clouds, while using public cloud for scalability and less sensitive workloads. They also seek unified backup and recovery across environments to maintain flexibility, security, compliance, and cyber resilience without compromising control over critical data.
Ransomware and destructive malware continue to evolve—how critical are immutable and isolated backups in today’s threat landscape?
Immutable and isolated backups are essential as modern ransomware targets backup data as well as production systems. Immutability prevents backup copies from being modified or deleted, while isolation protects them from compromised networks. Together, they ensure backup data remains safe even if attackers access the network or compromise production systems. However, these capabilities are most effective as part of a broader cyber resilience strategy that includes access controls, backup verification, recovery testing, and incident response planning.
What are some of the most common gaps you still see in how organisations approach backup and disaster recovery?
A common gap in backup and disaster recovery is assuming that having backups guarantees recovery. While the traditional 3-2-1 backup rule is the minimum standard for data protection, organisations need to adopt the 3-2-1-1-0 strategy with immutable backups and recovery drills. Another issue is that many enterprises only test recovery during incidents, which creates risks. Regular recovery drills are essential to verify backups, ensure fast restoration, and strengthen cyber resilience.
For SMBs in particular, how can they build strong cyber resilience without overcomplicating their infrastructure or increasing costs significantly?
For SMBs, building cyber resilience starts with simplicity and consistency. We recommend that companies use fewer and simpler solutions to reduce maintenance challenges, operational complexity, and potential gaps. Organisations should focus on reliable backup strategies, including multiple copies, off-site protection, and immutable backups. Centralised solutions enable IT teams to manage security, recovery, and resilience effectively without unnecessary cost or operational burden.
Do you see backup, storage, and recovery now becoming a core part of business continuity strategy rather than just an IT function?
Absolutely. Backup, storage, and recovery are now fundamental to business continuity because every critical operation relies on data. If data becomes unavailable, the impact extends far beyond IT to revenue, compliance, and customer trust. That is why recovery planning is now a business priority, aligning backup and recovery strategies with operational goals, clear recovery priorities, and regularly tested continuity plans.
How is the definition of “data resilience” changing in the context of modern digital transformation initiatives in the region?
Data resilience has evolved beyond backup and storage reliability. Today, it means ensuring data remains secure, available, recoverable, and trustworthy across cloud platforms, endpoints, SaaS, and hybrid environments. As digital transformation accelerates across the Middle East, organisations need visibility, strong governance, rapid recovery, and protection against cyber threats while meeting compliance requirements. Data resilience also supports AI adoption, cloud transformation, and data sovereignty, making it a core foundation for business continuity and digital trust.
What best practices would you recommend for organisations looking to future-proof their data protection strategies over the next 2–3 years?
Organisations should future-proof data protection by keeping strategies simple, effective, and aligned with business needs. The 3-2-1-1-0 backup approach, regular recovery drills, and timely updates are essential to ensure resilience. Rather than choosing only the cheapest option or complicated solutions, businesses should focus on investing in reliable protection, maintaining visibility across hybrid environments, and constantly testing their ability to recover from disruptions.
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