How channel partners can address cyber threats, data centre constraints and cloud concerns

Financial institutions have significant infrastructure challenges, in addition to all the economic uncertainty that continues at a global level. The threat of cyberattacks against enterprise data infrastructure continues to escalate and the likelihood of an attack at some point is increasing daily. It’s imperative that financial institutions build in more infrastructure level cyber resilience to minimise the impact of attacks by cyber criminals. At the same time, data centres are running out of space as financial enterprises reach full capacity but building new data centres may not be an option. The public cloud could be an option, but most find it’s more expensive than they expected, plus there are additional risks with shared data centres.

These three challenges – cyber threats, data capacity, and cloud adoption, require a different approach and financial sector customers will be turning to trusted partners for guidance. Channel specialists should feel comfortable advising on a new combination of storage infrastructure strategies. They will be called upon to share practical insights and recommend advanced technological solutions that are best suited to financial industry clients. These will include banks, insurance firms, asset management companies, credit card providers, and other financial services companies, amongst others. 

Here are some of the strategies and practical insights that channel partners providing enterprise storage for financial institutions need to be discussing with their clients.

Ransomware attacks against financial institutions are on the rise

Cyber resilience is critical for a financial institution’s storage infrastructure, both to protect and defend its data against cyberattacks, but also to rapidly recover data in the event of a ransomware attack. According to Statista, from 2021 to 2024, the share of financial institutions worldwide experiencing ransomware attacks increased significantly. In 2024, roughly 65 percent of financial organisations worldwide reported experiencing a ransomware attack, compared to 64 percent in 2023 and 34 percent in 2021.

To ensure the integrity of data being collected and processed – including bank account information, credit card information, client data and personal consumer information – banking and finance leaders need to navigate an ever more challenging security landscape.

Channel partners can play an important role in helping clients to understand the key to fighting off a cyberattack - having a known clean copy of data that can be recovered before the cyberattack has any significant impact. Getting this in place requires an enterprise storage strategy that is supported by cyber detection, automated cyber protection, encryption, access management controls, capacity consumption thresholds, guaranteed recovery time objectives (RTO), and data testing. At the same time, this strategy needs to comply with regulatory requirements.

Channel partners with clients in the financial services sector will appreciate that financial institutions have some of the most stringent cyber resilience and security requirements. These clients will need the assurance of compliance-optimised and resilient cyber recovery storage solutions, proven for use inside banks and other large financial institutions. To properly protect the enterprise’s primary storage, these cyber resilient storage solutions will need a range of vital elements including:

• Immutable snapshots – these can be automatically generated, time scheduled or manually created but must all share the common features of being secure and unchangeable, point-in-time copies of primary data.

• Logical remote and local air-gapping – to provide a simple way to separate immutable data copies from network access, either locally, remotely, or both.

• Fenced forensic environment – enabling the creation of a completely private network that is isolated for data validation, testing, and recovery.

• Cyber detection – to validate the integrity of immutable snapshots using powerful, AI-based scanning engines.

• Automated cyber protection – this reduces the threat window for cyberattacks, enabling seamless integration into an enterprise’s SOC, SIEM, or SOAR cyber security applications.

• Near-instantaneous cyber recovery – ensuring that all known good and validated data can be recovered and available for restore in minutes, regardless of the data set size.

When channel partners combine all these elements into an enterprise storage strategy, they all come together to build and enhance the cyber resilience of a financial institution’s data infrastructure. Having a broad set of cyber capabilities for both primary and secondary storage will ensure financial institutions can combat ransomware and malware attacks far more effectively.

Balancing data centre capacity constraints with public cloud concerns

Many financial institutions are understandably reluctant to build new data centres due to high construction costs and constant technological shifts. It is financially more viable to maximise the space available within existing data centres. At the same time, many have an interest in leveraging public cloud services, but face very legitimate concerns about the long-term costs and potential loss of data control and security. 

Channel partners can play a crucial advisory role here, supporting their financial industry clients with critical decision making over which direction they should take. In many instances, this will involve a combination of the two. Firstly, identifying how to provide the largest possible storage capacity in a fraction of the size of traditional storage arrays and thus making the best possible use of available data centre space. Secondly, by enabling clients to benefit from an end-to-end, hybrid multi-cloud experience in which the use of public and private clouds together is completely seamless.

Channel’s role in future-proofing financial infrastructure

As cyber threats continue to evolve, data centre space constraints persist, and cloud adoption becomes more complex, financial institutions will increasingly rely on channel partners for their expertise. By providing a comprehensive strategy that incorporates cyber resilience, storage optimisation and a balanced, cost efficient and secure cloud approach, solution partners can help their financial clients to build a future-proofed enterprise storage infrastructure. And ultimately, the channel partners that offer forward-thinking, compliance-driven enterprise storage solutions will not only generate immediate value for their clients, but also establish themselves as indispensable technology partners for financial data security and management.