5 Things to Look For in a Data Protection Partner

The protection and security of your data is critical to your resiliency as a business. With a multitude of service providers in the marketspace, how do you know which to choose?

Here are 5 recommended attributes in a data protection partner that will help you narrow down the options and ensure you are making an informed decision.

1. Multi-Supplier Offering

When working with a financial advisor, you want someone with access to a diversified portfolio of products, not someone who is trying to shoehorn you into one the offering of a single company. Similarly, your data protection partner should be working with multiple software solution providers to ensure you are getting the best in the market for each option. A multi-supplier approach gives you flexibility in cost and also demonstrates that the company you are working with has established relationships across a wider reach in the sector. This will help you avoid unreliable start-ups and irreputable outfits.

2. Multi-Cloud Platform

Multi-cloud refers to the distribution of cloud assets, software, applications, etc. across several cloud-hosting environments as a way to eliminate the reliance on any single cloud provider. For example, an enterprise may use different infrastructure providers for different workloads, deploy a single workload load balanced across multiple providers, or deploy a single workload on one provider, with a backup on another.

All this to say that a multi-cloud provider can offer you cost-efficiencies, increased flexibility through choice, reduced latency, and better protection against disasters. Without the sophistication and agility of a multi-cloud platform, you are only getting half the data protection benefits.

3. Specialized Data Security

Not all data is created equal. If your company is handling and storing personal or private data, the implications of a security failure or ransomware attack are much more involved. As another example, some manufacturers deal with sensitive data and specs related to national defense or dangerous controlled goods. The data compliance stakes are much higher for them, and the level of data protection and security required is also higher. Be sure to ask your prospective partner about specialized data expertise such as controlled goods certifications or ITAR compliance, especially if you fall into the sensitive data category.

4. Locally Owned & Operated

Supporting local business has been a popular sentiment in the fallout of COVID-19 and it also applies to your data protection solutions provider. But beyond bolstering the local economy, you should also consider that there are other benefits to using a local partner. Adherence to local policies may require certain data to be physically present within the area/country. Additionally, geographical distribution of processing requests from physically closer cloud units can reduce latency and improve performance. Overall, we recommend the simplicity and familiarity of partnering with a Canadian company that can represent international software solution providers as their local agent.

5. Free Test-Drive

What better way to ensure you are making the right decision when choosing a data protection partner than by actually test-driving the service? The right company can get you temporarily setup on their servers to provide you with reports on Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) which will quantifiably demonstrate the level of protection they can offer. Now you have metrics to truly compare apples to apples in your search for data protection and security.

With these 5 qualifiers in mind, you can now confidently narrow the field in your search for the right data protection partner.