Generative AI: The Most Transformative Force in AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a distant concept—it’s here and reshaping industries at an unprecedented pace. From healthcare to finance, transportation to manufacturing, AI is unlocking new efficiencies, solving complex challenges and driving impactful decisions. However, this level of influence brings significant responsibility, especially regarding data protection and cyber resilience for AI workloads.
According to the Dell Technologies Generative AI Pulse Survey, 76% of IT leaders believe that GenAI will have a significant, if not transformative, impact on their organizations. This belief is reflected in budget allocations, with 76% of respondents increasing their AI budgets to capitalize on this technology.
The Importance of Data Protection and Cyber Resiliency for AI Workloads
While the benefits of AI are immense, the associated risks cannot be ignored. AI applications generate vast amounts of data that need to be protected. Nearly 90% of organizations surveyed in the Dell Global Data Protection Index acknowledge that AI will create large volumes of data requiring protection. However, 65% of organizations are only backing up as little as 50% of their total AI data, according to Enterprise Strategy Group research. This gap highlights the urgent need for robust data protection strategies from the planning and design stages to safeguard AI applications and their data.
What to Consider When Protecting AI Workloads
Data Sources
- Location of data sources. Training AI models requires diverse data sources, including unstructured data, structured data and data lakes.
- Robustness of solutions. Ensure solutions protect data sources for backup, recovery, disaster recovery (DR) and cyber recovery.
- Data growth and SLAs/SLOs. Consider the rate of data growth and the service level agreements (SLAs) and service level objectives (SLOs) for data protection.
AI Models
- Maturity of AI models. Assess the integration of AI models with data protection and cyber resiliency solutions.
- Protection solutions. Evaluate the robustness of solutions for backup, recovery, DR and cyber recovery.
- Environment. Ensure protection for on-premises, public cloud, containers and virtual machines.
- Training copies. Maintain copies of models used for training.
Inquiries and Responses
- Regulatory and privacy requirements. Adhere to compliance requirements for long-term retention of sensitive data.
- Records of inquiries and responses. Maintain records for legal protection and data governance.
Why Data Protection is Important
Cyber Resiliency
AI workloads are prime targets for cyber-attacks, making cybersecurity a critical aspect of AI deployment. Common threats include data poisoning, ransomware, privacy breaches and social engineering.
Compliance and Legal Protection
Long-term retention of sensitive data is essential for compliance. Legal protections against IP infringement, use of personal identifiable information (PII), proof of prompt and response and copyright violations must be considered.
Workload State and Dataset Reconstruction
Maintaining the state of AI workloads for performance or re-vectoring and reconstructing datasets used for generating models are key for operational continuity.
Dell PowerProtect for Securing AI Workloads
It is essential to protect training data, models, configurations and parameters by ensuring they are backed up on primary storage and can be sent to a cyber recovery vault if necessary. Additionally, safeguarding modern workloads such as Kubernetes volumes, Elastic Search, PostGreSQL, MongoDB and more is crucial for maintaining data integrity and security.
Dell’s PowerProtect portfolio offers comprehensive solutions for protecting AI workloads.
PowerProtect Data Manager
- Cloud-ready architecture. Integration with multicloud environments.
- Cyber resilient. Native immutability and orchestrated recovery.
- Robust protection. Tailored for modern workloads, especially Kubernetes.
PowerProtect Data Domain
- Performance and efficiency. Optimized for both traditional and modern workloads.
- Security and resilience. Data immutability and integrity with a CPU-centric architecture.
PowerProtect Cyber Recovery
- Protects and isolates critical data from ransomware and sophisticated threats.
- Utilizes machine learning to identify suspicious activity.
- Enables recovery of known good data.
Dell’s data protection solutions enhance cyber resilience, safeguarding against data loss and attacks while ensuring compliance for the long-term retention of sensitive information. This approach minimizes risks associated with intellectual property, personally identifiable information and copyright, providing vital legal protection. Furthermore, optimizing workloads facilitates the maintenance and restoration of AI workload states, while dataset reconstruction enables the seamless integration of data from diverse sources.
Accelerate Your AI Innovation with Dell AI Factory
The Dell AI Factory represents our strategy for integrating AI into business operations, ensuring successful and consistent deployment at any scale. Dell’s AI Factory leverages the proven performance, efficiency and scale of Dell PowerProtect to secure AI workloads including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with NVIDIA Microservices.
The integration of AI into business operations is more than a technological advancement—it’s a strategic necessity. However, the benefits of AI can only be fully realized if the associated data is protected and cyber-resilient.
Elevate your AI capabilities and enjoy the peace of mind that comes with robust protection and cyber resiliency for your AI workloads.
