April 16, 2026April 16, 2026 By DSM Group Cloud Computing, Consultancy, Data Centre, Disaster Recovery, ESG, Hardware & software, Hosting & Colocation, IT Support

The Modern IT Landscape: Technical Challenges Facing Businesses in 2026

he current IT environment is defined by rapid innovation, but also by compounding complexity, expanding attack surfaces, and operational fragility. Businesses are no longer simply “using IT”—they are entirely dependent on it. As a result, infrastructure decisions now directly determine resilience, security posture, regulatory compliance, and ultimately commercial survival.

Below is a deep technical breakdown of the most pressing challenges organisations face today.

1. Cloud Complexity and Misconfiguration Risk

The shift to hybrid and multi-cloud architectures has created distributed, fragmented infrastructure models that are inherently difficult to secure and manage.

Cloud adoption continues to accelerate, driven by scalability and AI workloads
However, misconfigurations remain the dominant cause of breaches, with poorly secured storage, IAM policies, and exposed services acting as entry points
Recent findings show up to 80% of cloud breaches stem from basic configuration errors

Technical Reality

Modern environments include:

Multi-cloud (AWS, Azure, private cloud)
Kubernetes / container orchestration layers
CI/CD pipelines with embedded secrets
API-driven microservices

Each layer introduces:

Identity sprawl (users, service accounts, tokens)
Policy inconsistency across platforms
Limited visibility into east-west traffic

Implication

Without centralised governance, continuous configuration monitoring (CSPM), and identity control, organisations are operating with unknown exposure risk.

DSM Alignment

A properly architected colocation plus private cloud hybrid model, supported by managed services, allows:

Deterministic control over infrastructure
Reduced reliance on hyperscaler complexity
Secure segmentation and predictable performance

2. Explosion of Attack Surface and Identity-Based Threats

The traditional network perimeter is effectively gone. Modern environments are defined by identity, not location.

Machine identities (APIs, certificates, service accounts) now vastly outnumber humans
Credential theft accounts for a growing proportion of breaches, with sharp increases in compromised identities

Technical Reality

Attack vectors now include:

Stolen API tokens from CI/CD pipelines
Compromised service accounts with excessive privileges
Lateral movement via poorly segmented networks
Abuse of OAuth and federated identity systems

Traditional controls such as firewalls and VPNs are ineffective against:

Authenticated attackers
Insider threats
Compromised machine identities

Implication

Security must move toward:

Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA)
Continuous authentication and behavioural monitoring
Least privilege access enforced dynamically

DSM Alignment

This is where managed cybersecurity services become critical:

Identity governance and privileged access management
Network segmentation within controlled data centre environments
SIEM and XDR monitoring with real-time threat detection

3. AI-Driven Threat Acceleration

Artificial Intelligence is now both a defensive tool and a threat multiplier.

The majority of organisations are using AI, significantly expanding attack surfaces
AI enables attackers to automate phishing campaigns, malware generation, and reconnaissance

At the same time:

AI systems introduce new trust boundaries
Autonomous agents can interact with systems without human validation

Technical Reality

AI introduces:

Unstructured data exposure risks
Model poisoning and prompt injection vulnerabilities
API-level attack surfaces
Autonomous decision-making risks

Implication

Security models must evolve to:

Treat AI agents as identities
Enforce strict access controls and audit trails
Monitor behaviour, not just signatures

DSM Alignment

A secure, controlled hosting environment rather than uncontrolled public AI integrations enables:

Data sovereignty
Controlled AI workload deployment
Reduced exposure to external threat vectors

4. Data Centre Demand, Power Constraints, and Sustainability Pressure

The backbone of IT, data centres, is under unprecedented strain.

Global demand for data centre capacity is expected to triple by 2030
Power consumption is rising dramatically, becoming a primary constraint
Data centres are now considered critical national infrastructure in the UK

Technical Reality

Operators face:

Power density challenges from AI workloads such as GPU clusters
Cooling inefficiencies between air and liquid systems
Grid constraints and energy pricing volatility
ESG and carbon reporting requirements

Implication

Businesses must consider:

Where workloads are hosted
Energy efficiency of infrastructure
Long-term sustainability commitments

DSM Alignment

Facilities designed with:

Water cooling and energy-efficient systems
Renewable energy integration such as solar
Scalable high-density rack capability

…provide both cost control and ESG alignment, which is increasingly a commercial requirement.

5. Regulatory Pressure and Data Sovereignty

Governments are tightening control over data location, cyber resilience, and supply chain security.

There is increasing focus on digital sovereignty and reducing reliance on foreign hyperscalers
New legislation is driving higher standards for critical infrastructure protection

Technical Reality

Organisations must now manage:

Data residency requirements
Encryption and key ownership
Third-party risk including supply chain attacks
Auditability and compliance reporting

Implication

Public cloud alone is often insufficient for:

Sensitive workloads
Regulated industries
Long-term compliance strategy

DSM Alignment

UK-based data centre and IT services provide:

Sovereign infrastructure control
Compliance-ready environments aligned to recognised standards
Reduced exposure to geopolitical and vendor risk

6. Operational Resilience and Disaster Recovery Gaps

Modern businesses must assume breach or failure is inevitable.

Focus is shifting from prevention to resilience and recovery
Many organisations still lack tested disaster recovery plans and reliable backup strategies

Technical Reality

Common weaknesses include:

Backups stored in the same environment as production
Unverified recovery processes
Lack of orchestration for failover
Inadequate ransomware recovery strategies

Implication

Downtime is no longer just operational. It is financially catastrophic, reputationally damaging, and potentially a regulatory failure.

DSM Alignment

Robust Disaster Recovery as a Service solutions deliver:

Defined recovery objectives such as 15-minute RPO
Offsite, immutable backups
Rapid failover capability
Full business continuity assurance

7. Skills Shortage and Tool Sprawl

Even well-funded organisations struggle with execution.

Security teams are overwhelmed by alert fatigue, tool fragmentation, and skills shortages
Many organisations operate numerous disconnected security tools, creating silos and blind spots

Technical Reality

This leads to:

Slow incident response
Inconsistent policy enforcement
Increased mean time to detect and respond

Implication

Technology alone is not the solution. Integration and expertise are critical.

DSM Alignment

Managed IT and security services provide:

Consolidated tooling and visibility
Experienced technical and security professionals
Continuous monitoring and response capability

Complexity to Control

The overarching challenge facing businesses today is not any single technology. It is the convergence of all of them.

Cloud, AI, identity, regulation, infrastructure, and evolving threats are individually manageable, but collectively overwhelming.

The organisations that succeed will be those that:

Regain control over their infrastructure
Simplify architecture where possible
Embed security at every layer
Prioritise resilience over theoretical perfection

This is where a fully integrated approach combining data centre, IT services, and cybersecurity becomes essential rather than optional.

February 25, 2022February 25, 2022 By DSM Group Cloud Backup, Disaster Recovery

V11: Immutable primary backup storage

Ransomware and malicious acts within our IT environments are rampant across the world, and the last line of defence is going to be your backups.

In Veeam Backup & Replication v10 the ability to store your Veeam backups using the Object Lock API was introduced. This would mean that you would have a secondary copy of your backup data most likely offsite and in an immutable state, which means it can’t be modified and is protected against insider malicious activity.

Fast forward to the release of Veeam Backup & Replication v11, and a way of storing data, agnostic to hardware in your primary location leveraging Linux with the NEW Hardened Linux Repository has been enabled.

Benefits of immutable storage backup

By definition, immutability is a solution that prevents data deletion or modification from the storage.

Knowing that data is critical to all businesses—leveraging an immutable copy of your backup data ensures that there is an untouched version of that source data that is always recoverable and safe from any failure scenario.

Veeam Backup & Replication v11 enables you to store your short-term retention backups locally onsite for fast recovery with the protection of immutability. In addition, you can now tier those backups into an immutable object storage offering offsite, giving you additional protection against unforeseen malicious activity or accidental deletion.

Immutable backup storage can help in the following cases:

Production data is corrupted or compromised
Accidental deletion of production data
Insider malicious activity, administrators modifying backup job retention or deleting restore points.

What is the Hardened Linux Repository?

The Hardened Linux Repository enables primary backups to be immutable, not by packaging a storage appliance together, but by offering the ability to achieve local immutable backup storage by using generic compute and storage with a supported Linux x64 distribution that provides this functionality.

Immutability protects your data from loss because of malware activity or other failure scenarios mentioned above by temporarily prohibiting the deletion and modification of data.

A storage solution that prevents deletion and modification of backups

Now you know the purpose behind it and why we are doing this for our primary backups. But you have only seen part of the How — on the Linux server itself you do not need to set anything, Veeam will have that covered for you.

By default, the immutability is set to seven days for standard backups on the repository. It is very important that your job configuration reflects this so that your active backup chain is protected.

Ransomware or outside malicious activity are well-known 24/7/365 threats. Take a lesson from history – even the great city of Troy, that resisted outside threats for centuries, was quickly destroyed from within. When you use the immutable flag even the kings of backups themselves, the backup administrators, cannot delete those backup files.

Single access credentials

Protect the keys to the kingdom! It’s clear to see that a lot of this new feature is focused on the security and protection of your backup data. By focusing on access control, we are further reducing the possible attack vectors by not allowing Veeam or the backup administrator to have unbridled access to an elevated user account that was or is used initially to deploy Veeam services. These one-time use for deployment credentials are not stored by Veeam Backup & Replication.

I hear you asking, how do we get started?

Call us on 03333 22 11 00 or contact us using the form below:

Credit: Michael Cade

July 27, 2021March 31, 2022 By DSM Group Cloud Backup, Disaster Recovery

Four key reasons why you should backup your data

Today’s world revolves around electronic data; Business simply cannot operate without it. No data = no business.

Data is one of the life bloods of a business; With the ever increasing risks (viruses, hackers, natural disasters, hardware failures etc.) it’s almost inevitable something will, eventually, go wrong; It’s not an ‘if’ but more like a ‘when’. The scale of loss could be anything from a hard drive failure to a ransomware attack.

We have created a list of the four main reasons why you should ensure your data is correctly and securely backed up.

Hacking and ransomware

It is estimated around half of UK businesses faced some form of cyber-security breach in 2019/20. Most of the time the firewall and/or anti-virus software will trap the attempted infiltration however…. just like some human viruses, there’s an occasional one that gets through and causes havoc.

In extreme cases, hackers can encrypt and hold your data to ransom. If you don’t have your data backed up (effectively), the only way to recover it might be to pay them. There is, of course, no guarantee that your data will be returned.

Ransomware or a virus may not be specifically targeted to you – they are designed to be smart and will automatically seek the weakness in IT systems then spread further and embed themselves until the circumstances are right for maximum damage.

The best way to negate a ransomware attack is to ensure your systems are correctly patched, firewalled and an effective data backup is in place.

Not all data loss is malicious

While it’s easy to think of data loss as being a purposeful act, UK government stats, indicate that the vast majority of data losses and breaches are the result of human error.

Staff within your business have to handle your data as part of their job, so there’s always a chance of data being deleted by accident. If you don’t want your company to be detrimentally impacted by a business critical file or email that’s accidentally been deleted (or maybe purposeful by a disgruntled employee), you need an effective backup solution.

Disasters happen

When protecting against data loss, businesses also need to think about the safety of the hardware that stores their data. It is often more fragile than you might think.

Disaster is often thought of as being a grand scale event eg: Fire, Flood, Explosion but, in fact, it’s often more mundane actions that cause the issues: Poor-quality electrics, leaking roof or pipe, failed air conditioning unit etc

Without an effective backup, you can seriously risk the future of your business.

Critical data loss destroys businesses

Approximately 9 out of 10 companies that lose their data for more than 10 days end up filing for bankruptcy within a year. In fact, many of those businesses file for bankruptcy immediately.

Why? The loss of data can cause significant business interruption. Most businesses simply cannot afford such downtime. Depending on the scale of the breach, a business may also be subject to regulatory fines (as a result of GDPR for example).

Data loss can also prove catastrophically damaging to reputation. Companies can find that the cost of losing (and subsequently trying to win back) customer confidence, following data loss or theft, far outweighs the actual cost of the data loss itself.

The faster you can get up and running again, the more likely you are to retain customer confidence. This is why an effective data backup is imperative.

Protecting your data

There’s a number of ways you can backup your business data however, the most recognised and effective solution is an offsite, cloud backup. ‘Cloud’ is not a mythical place but a purpose designed building with specialist technical staff and systems.

By working with such a specialist provider, you can ensure that your critical data is automatically backed-up – effectively and securely and perhaps, more importantly, capable of being recovered – easily.

Don’t know where to start? We are here to work with you to create a custom backup solution for your business data.

May 21, 2020December 21, 2021 By DSM Group blog, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Workplace Recovery

Reality remains in the office

Working from home – the new normal or the new risk?

So, working from home is the new normal – right? We’ll never go to the office again – really? The kitchen worktop or the chest of drawers in the spare bedroom makes for a great office – yes? The kids screaming– isn’t an issue, the cat/dog pawing at your leg doesn’t intrude on your train of thought or interrupt the flow of the important client meeting on Zoom or Teams? All is sweet then – carry on!

If you’re fortunate to have an office at home you may be spared some of these intrusions…. but note….. it’s an ‘office’. For most, the home ‘office’ is a ‘make do’. ‘Make do’s are either a pain or a novelty that eventually become a pain. ‘Make do’ spaces are often a borrowed resource with such borrowing sometimes lasting only minutes.

The current crisis is sure to bring about some changes but, is going to the ‘real’ office a thing of the past? For many reasons, we think it unlikely – although for sure, on the back of the novelty factor, the ‘we-can-work-from-home’ brigade , which range from those counting the pennies (believing it will save a fortune) to those with imaginations of a paradise, will strive to prove it is the new normal.

So why do we think the ‘real’ office is still here for a while longer……

Well for one, the majority of businesses are technically not ready. Cyber criminals, though, are very ready! The ‘real office’ may be well firewalled but, the likelihood of this extending to the home office, is small. Wrapped within pages of GDPR legislation, businesses have many legal obligations for securing data – especially that which is personal. Aside the possibility of all company data being encrypted and ransoms demanded, those that flout the regulations can be heavily fined and Directors held accountable. Home working – is it the new normal or is it the new risk – a very big risk!

April 26, 2019November 9, 2021 By DSM Group blog, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery

Do SME’s Really Need A Disaster Recovery Plan?

When it comes to keeping your business running, it’s important to have plans in place to deal with both good and bad times ahead.

Business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans are an excellent way to ensure the protection of your organisation, however, it’s easy to get the two mixed up. Many people assume that because they have implemented a business continuity plan (BCP) they do not require a disaster recovery plan (DRP), and vice versa.

It is true to say they are very closely linked, but to briefly explain; BCP’s take a more proactive approach to minimise and avoid the risk of downtime, whilst DRP’s focus on recovering from the disaster.

In this article we will look specifically at the business continuity plan, why it’s a good idea and why you should have one.

Generally people do not enjoy paperwork, and business owners understandably will see a business continuity plan as just another tedious task to complete that will probably go unused; so here are a few interesting facts which could highlight the importance of a BCP.

On average, a medium-sized data centre will experience over three downtime events each year, with the average power cut lasting over 3.5 hours. Source: Eaton UK

Some 77 per cent of UK organisations (approximately 4.2 million) experienced connectivity failures in 2016. On average, UK organisations were also found to have suffered 4-5 outages each during 2016 and a wait of six hours every time for service to be restored. Source: ISP Review

Just over half (54 per cent) of UK companies have been hit by ransomware attacks resulting in variable amounts of downtime (58 per cent of UK companies pay up to get access to data and systems again.) Source: Malwarebytes

Almost all (97 per cent) of network professionals in a survey by Veriflow agree that ‘human error’ is the most common reason for network outages. Source: Network World

Depending on your company’s area, losing vital business systems could ultimately cost you customers, because your existing customers could choose to go elsewhere. In addition to this the damage to your reputation and the lack of credibility if there is no BCP in place could be extremely costly!

Hopefully the above has persuaded you to think about the importance of having a business continuity plan so in the event of a power cut, connectivity issues, network outage or cyber-attack your business can ride the storm and get back to business as soon as possible.

If you’re under the impression that a disaster is unlikely to happen to your business, you might be mistaken. It could be something as simple as a staff member keeping watch of an absent colleagues emails whilst they’re on holiday and accidentally opening a cleverly presented, yet malicious, email. If that email contained ransomware, and the attack was successful, it would only take a few seconds for all the files on the computer and everything else connected to it – namely the server – to be encrypted.

Before you know it, your network is unavailable, staff are unable to work, and a disaster recovery plan is vital. In addition to downtime, failing to have a business continuity plan in place could cost a business severe reputational damage, and it could even raise certain compliance issues.

When you’re busy running a business, it could be easy to forget that you are a prime target for cyber hackers, and many have made the mistake of assuming that these hackers are only interested in going after bigger organisations. But, the fact is that when you’re an SME, your cyber defences are easier to hack, reason being you will not have the same budget available to you to spend on cybersecurity as a larger business, and attacking a small company carries a much lower risk than attempting to infiltrate a larger organisation, as the cyber criminals are less likely to be caught.

Not to mention, hackers know that a small business is more likely to pay a ransom to have files decrypted quickly, so that business can get back to normal and downtime can be minimised. That’s why it’s essential that you have a robust Business Continuity Plan in place, so you can avoid these situations, and deal with them swiftly should the need arise. Below, I outline the key aspects you should take into consideration when creating a BCP.
Key considerations for a Business Continuity Plan

Key business functions – what is going to cost your business the most if they are affected by an IT outage or system downtime?
Minimise the risk – what could be done to avoid critical business functions being affected by downtime, implement preventative solutions such as cyber awareness on risks/threats, staff education and network monitoring,
Recovery times – what could you do to reduce the time taken to get critical business functions operational again? As a suggestion, increase the frequency of backups for critical data.
Failover plans – what could you do to get important business functions operating during an incident? For example, if your head office suffered a power cut could staff work from another location?

Do you require more information?
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Category Archives: Disaster Recovery

V11: Immutable primary backup storage

Benefits of immutable storage backup

What is the Hardened Linux Repository?

A storage solution that prevents deletion and modification of backups

Single access credentials

Reality remains in the office

Do SME’s Really Need A Disaster Recovery Plan?

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