Three Key Takeaways in the Era of the Zettabyte (How Much Data Is That Exactly?)

The Era of the Zettabyte

Sounds so ominous, the era of the zettabyte… I mean how big is a zettabyte anyways? A zettabyte is approximately equal to a thousand exabytes, or a billion terabytes and if you consider a large physical library holds the equivalent of 2 terabytes of data, you can start to see how enormous a zettabyte of data is. It’s actually pretty incredible to think that by 2025 there will be over 100 zettabytes of data stored in the cloud. (mind blown)

Modern society continues to create and store more and more data in the cloud, leading to an uncontrolled expansion of the data attack surface. With the way the cloud has removed the traditional perimeter and created a new data attack surface, the job of securing this data becomes increasingly challenging, if not next to impossible, with legacy data security or manual methods. Security teams don’t have a big picture view of the data that exists in various cloud services, which continues to grow exponentially every second of every day.

The Era of a Cloud-Native, Data-Centric Security Model

You want to leap forward into the future? It means using modern, cloud-native approaches for data security. Legacy data security suites aren’t going to cut it because they just don’t give visibility into what sensitive and regulated data you have in the public cloud. Yikes!

As the year is quickly coming to an end and another year is almost upon us, and as data continues to proliferate exponentially in the cloud, isn’t it high time we learn how to protect our data in the cloud? 

Seeing as we just had a webinar about learning how to protect your data attack surface, I thought it would be fun to share some takeaways. Check out our 3 key takeaways from our latest webinar, “Cloud Data Security 101: Learn how to Protect Your Data in the Cloud”. 

1. Data Democratization and Risk

Data is the new fuel or, as we like to call it, the new uranium  – because it is a critical element of growth. We all understand how important it is for innovation, and data democratization enables everyone in an organization to work with data to make it more accessible to do more analytics as quickly as possible. 

It increases agility, promotes innovation, and speeds up delivery of products to market..but it also contributes to the rapid growth of the “data attack surface.”  Developers can spin up or copy entire datastores in minutes, without ever involving security, adding immense amounts of complexity and risk.  

2. Shadow Data Remediation and Reduction

Shadow data. Everyone has it. That data security is unaware of that is hanging out creating risk, entirely unbeknownst to them. At Laminar we’ve also discovered shadow data in 100% of our customers’ object storage services.

So we all have Shadow Data, now what? This is where a Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) solution comes into play. (DSPM is an emerging security trend named by Gartner in its 2022 Hype Cycle for Data Security.) This category has emerged out of a direct need to discover, classify, prioritize, monitor, and protect sensitive data in the cloud without the limitations of existing approaches. It attacks the problem first by identifying all data, known and shadow, an organization has in the cloud.

But that’s just the start: Read this comprehensive DSPM guide to learn everything you need to know to get started!

3. Solutions to Address the Sprawl of Data We All Face: The Ominous “Data Attack Surface”

DSMP solutions, enter stage left. DSPM solutions reduce the data attack surface by discovering all of your cloud data, classifying it by sensitivity, and then providing plans to remediate or mitigate data exposure. It is an approach to cloud data security that focuses on finding and securing sensitive data rather than cloud infrastructure security like CSPMs or CNAPPs. 

The data attack surface is a huge attack vector when it comes to the cloud. Reducing the data attack surface by focusing on the data first will allow for your company’s valuable data to be kept safe. 

Ready to learn more?

Interested in learning more about how you can protect your data in the cloud by learning in depth about new and evolving security risks associated with cloud data? Then check out our latest webinar or read our ebook for the Top 3 Reasons Cloud Data Security Belongs in 2023 Security Budgets!