Long gone are the days where you back up all your data all time, and now your data backups can be even smarter with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

AI and machine learning technologies are enabling data storage and protection systems to predict what might go wrong, ensure that mission critical applications and data are backed up, and speed up the data recovery process in the event of a disruption or data breach.

Predicting Worst Scenarios

Predictive AI can envision what could go wrong and what events might lead to data loss, including hardware failures and attacks by actors, including the likelihood of malware or ransomware.

By employing machine learning to look at historical data, modern data backup tools can analyze trends and spot unusual activity that influence your data backup plans and confirm your data protection processes and tools are working correctly and meeting compliance requirements.

AI can even help you run simulations of likely scenarios so that you test the effectiveness of your data backup strategy, giving you have peace of mind everything will work as needed in case of a data breach or disaster.

Optimizing Data Backups

In addition to making sure your data backup systems are working properly, it can help to automate tasks to reduce pressure on your IT teams, as well as identify data that should be automatically backed up frequently based on your point objectives (RPO).

AI also enables your data backup systems to learn based on the data they process, and even make changes without human intervention because they can predict which data and applications must be replicated frequently in the case of a disruption. It can also identify redundant data that no longer needs to take up space on primary or secondary storage, as well as data that might have been corrupted.

Accelerating Recovery

When a data loss occurs – not if – AI can help speed up incident response times and recovery of data and systems.

Just as it can help identify what data must prioritized for backup, AI can help prioritize what must be recovered first to restore mission critical operations as to minimize disruption to customers and employee productivity. It can also validate that all data was successfully recovered.

AI can also you learn from your recovery to improve your process plans – machine learning creates a feedback loop that can iteratively refine your data protection strategy from end-to-end, thereby reducing the likelihood of a data breach or disruption, and greatly improving the effectiveness of your incident response in the event of a disaster.

Data backup tools that leverage AI should be considered table stakes, and a managed services provider with a focus on security can help take advantage of it to make your backups smarter and reduce your risk of business disruptions.