Private Data Harbor in the Cloud: Two Steps Forward, No Steps Back

Technological trends can be a roller coaster, and cloud repatriation is a great example. Cloud repatriation is the process of moving workloads from public cloud resources back to on-premises or private cloud infrastructure, and is becoming a significant trend among organizations. According to a 2024 Barclays CIO Survey, 83% of companies are now planning or actively implementing cloud repatriation strategies, a sharp increase from just 43% in 2020.¹ This trend reflects a broad reassessment of cloud strategies as organizations reconsider the balance between security, cost, and control.

Isn’t repatriating cloud workloads a step backward? 

Public cloud migration marked a significant technological advancement for businesses across the world by making powerful infrastructure instantly available at limitless scale. The cloud also makes data accessible from anywhere and decreases the need for ongoing hardware maintenance and specialized staff. As more businesses consider moving away from the cloud, it raises an important question – isn’t this a technological step backward?

In many ways, undoubtedly. The key drivers behind this trend include major concerns over data security, changing government regulations and cost economics. While the cloud offers scalability and flexibility, countless high-profile data breaches have made businesses wary of the shared responsibility model, where cloud providers make no promises for the security of the data itself. Without better protections and new operational efficiencies, many enterprises see no option but to bring some workloads back on-premises.

Why public cloud is perfect for backup data storage

With the rise of cyber attacks like ransomware, enterprises have a renewed focus on backup and recovery. The public cloud makes it fast and easy to store a copy of data offsite, isolated from natural disasters or local network intrusions. This increases the chances of retaining a clean copy of data to recover from.

Also, with up to 20% annual growth in enterprise data volume, storing backups in the cloud can be a cost-effective alternative to adding racks and racks of storage appliances.² Since backup data is rarely accessed, egress fees are relatively minimal. In disaster scenarios, the cost of retrieval is far outweighed by the value of restoring operations quickly. 

Creating a Private Data Harbor on public clouds

Storing a copy of data offsite in the cloud is a great option – but what if the cloud is breached? The answer is cyberstorage, an emerging trend for protecting sensitive data. Gartner defines cyberstorage as a combination of cybersecurity and data storage that uses active defense measures to secure unstructured data. Emerging technologies, such as a Private Data Harbor, are quickly changing the landscape of how cloud data is protected from ransomware, exfiltration, and accidental misconfiguration. It captures all of the best parts of the public cloud, with the security and control of a private cloud.

The Data Harbor fragments encrypted data and scatters it across multiple cloud providers, so it becomes nearly impossible for anyone other than the rightful owner to reconstruct any meaningful data. By optionally mirroring the fragments, additional security benefits such as self-healing and 100% uptime are possible.

This allows businesses to harness the immense storage and compute power of the public cloud, while ensuring that their data is protected as if it were inside of their own datacenter. In the face of escalating cyber threats that have businesses searching for a way to ‘batten down the hatches,’ the Data Harbor offers a giant leap forward.