Many companies are in the dark about data protection. Some assume it’s part and parcel with their cloud infrastructure — and then a disaster prompts a rude awakening. Startups are cropping up to meet the need for data protection across clouds, but their “three-clicks to-nirvana” spiel is suspect, according to Jyothi Swaroop (pictured), vice president of global marketing at Veritas Technologies LLC.

Reports of transportation companies grounded because their cloud providers did not provide backup and recovery have driven the point home, according to Swaroop. They probably mistakenly trusted their cloud vendors to manage it for them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

“If you actually read through some of the contracts that are out there from multicloud vendors or cloud vendors, it will clearly say, ‘You, Mr. Customer, are responsible for your own data protection,'” Swaroop said.

Swaroop spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host Justin Warren (@jpwarren), chief analyst at PivotNine Pty Ltd, during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed Veritas’ data protection legacy, its future direction, and how data protection and governance can ease General Data Protection Regulation pains. (* Disclosure below.)

Is stupid-simple protection hiding holes?

So how do companies choose a solid data-protection solution? Hybrid and multicloud environments that scatter data hither and thither can make finding a single product that spans them all tough. The trending data-protection startups promise idiot-proof ease-of-use but may be missing key nuts and bolts under the hood, according to Swaroop.

“If you noticed, there’s a lot of money being raised in the data-protection space,” he said. “And what’s the message they use? The message is that of simplicity, because they can’t come out of the gate and say, ‘We’re the most reliable, scalable product that’s being used by 86 percent of the Fortune 500.'”

Veritas, on the other hand, can say those things, Swaroop stated. To compete with the new kids, it’s revamped its interface. “We created an entire team for user experience alone. And we’ve simplified all of the operations on NetBackup [backup and recovery suite],” he said.

Veritas is continuing to expand from data protection into software-defined storage. Multicloud neutrality and data classification on ingestion for GDPR compliance are focal points of the expansion, Swaroop concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference. (* Disclosure: Veritas Technologies LLC sponsored this segment, with additional broadcast sponsorship from VMware Inc. Veritas, VMware, and other sponsors do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE