Actifio Copy Data Virtualization Helps Companies Tackle Common Gaps in

Data Control
Enterprises struggle with providing proper access and control of critical data
throughout both backup, and application development and testing processes
DUBAI, UAE October 19, 2015 Actifio, the copy data virtualization company, today
announced dramatic growth in the number of enterprise customers using Actifio to better control
access to their confidential data, particularly throughout their data protection and application
development processes. This comes as research by IDC, commissioned by Actifio, has found
many enterprises are still struggling to control their critical data, with two-thirds of enterprises
failing to meet best practice standards for data control.
Actifios Virtual Data Pipeline technology provides a holistic approach to data management
that enables large organizations to capture data directly from production applications, manage a
single golden master copy of that data in their most secure environment, and then use virtual
copies to maintain both accessibility and control.
The use of a copy data virtualization platform severely limits the proliferation and availability of
physical data copies, when data is both at rest and being moved or migrated between
production and non-production environments, generations of hardware, data centers or cloud
infrastructure. Most importantly, copy data virtualization decreases the number of targets
available to those with harmful intent.
Keeping enterprise data both safe and accessible is a complex balancing act made all the more
difficult by the geometric growth rate of production data. When coupled with conventional data
protection programs and a siloed approach to copy data creation, the result is an unintended
and uncontrolled proliferation of rogue copies of sensitive data. This data is difficult to keep
track of, let alone protect. Organizations and individual users dissatisfied with the
responsiveness of infrastructure and operations can often lead to shadow IT operations that
contain such rogue copies. Each added physical copy increases the surface area of attack for

this data, creating additional opportunities for the wrong people to get access to confidential or
personally identifiable information of clients.
The problem still persists throughout the vast majority of enterprises, despite well publicized
high-profile security breaches or data leaks,. This is illustrated by the results of a recent survey
conducted by leading analyst firm IDC, summarized in a new white paper commissioned by
Actifio. The white paper, entitled Common Gaps in Data Control: Identifying, Quantifying, and
Solving Them Using Best Practices found:

Two-thirds of enterprises fail to meet best practice standards for data control and few are
likely to be consistent across the full spectrum of data security policies.

77 percent of surveyed organizations fail to mask sensitive data during the

test/development phase, which significantly increases the threat of a data breach.

Government performs best overall at implementing data control policies; the Education

sector is the weakest

The CIO is central to the implementation of data control/security policies policies are

only applied on an ad-hoc basis 34 percent of the time

A typical organization holds 375 data copies, with each copy carrying sensitive
information and therefore an increased risk of attack

The Actifio-commissioned white paper contains insights from a survey of senior executives at
429 mid-to-large scale enterprises across five industry sectors Government, Financial,
Education, Healthcare and Retail, and focuses on current trends related to data access,
management, masking, copy proliferation and tracking. To view the IDC white paper in full,
please download it here, or view more highlights in this Actifio blog.
Our research clearly identified two major challenges faced by IT executives - the copy data
proliferation problem and the copy data access problem, said Phil Goodwin, research director,
Storage Systems and Software of IDC. Copy data is costly, and introduces risk when it needs
to be accessed. Organizations need solutions that can automate copy data management and
subsequently reduce risk and cost in the enterprise and public sector environments; manual
efforts are simply insufficient
The enterprise copy data access problem is simply too large and broad for IT organizations to
handle manually. By 2018, IDC estimates copy data will be cost IT organizations $50.63 billion
and currently consumes up to 60 percent of the IT storage hardware and infrastructure budget.

The truth is most companies are have no idea how many copies of a given data set are floating
around in their infrastructure or in the cloud, said Ash Ashutosh, CEO of Actifio. If you dont
know how many copies you have you dont know where they are, and if you dont know where
they are you cant tell who has access to them. Actifio gives customers a single system of
record to take control of their secondary data, and more and more CIOs are taking a proactive
approach to reduce the threat of exposure.
Actifio can help business obtain the outcomes they seek in relation to data management control:

Secure and stable operations

Data access without compromise

Auditability & smart threat alerts

Business risk, disruption and recovery protection

For more information on Actifios capabilities for data control as part of a copy data solution,
download this Data Control Solution Brief, which details best practices as well as security
features incorporated into Actifios solutions.
About Actifio
Actifio virtualizes the data thats the lifeblood of businesses in more than 30 countries around
the world. Actifios Virtual Data Pipeline technology enables customers to protect, access, and
move their data faster, more efficiently, and more simply by decoupling data from physical
storage, similar to hypervisor technology decoupling compute from physical servers. For
enterprise-class backup modernization, self-serve instant data access, or service provider
business transformation, Actifio is the first and only choice for radically simple copy data
virtualization. For more visit Actifio.com, or follow us on Twitter @Actifio.
Contact:
Sanjeev
Vistar Communications
PO Box: 127631
Dubai, UAE
Email: sanjeev@vistarmea.com