Why Modern Data Protection Demands a Shift from On-Premises Solutions

A Transformational Shift Begins

In a world where data volumes double every few years, organizations face mounting challenges in safeguarding sensitive information. Enterprises now generate staggering amounts of data daily—spanning communications, transactions, analytics, files, and more. Managing, securing, and ensuring the privacy of this data has become both a critical priority and a complex undertaking.

Prior to 2020, most organizations relied on on-premises data protection to address these challenges. This approach was widely adopted as the industry standard, offering perceived control by confining sensitive assets within tightly managed corporate networks and data centers.

However, the post-pandemic era ushered in a fundamental shift: remote and hybrid work became the new reality, applications moved outside the data center, and data was no longer confined to centralized networks—it now existed everywhere. This included laptops at kitchen tables, SaaS applications accessed from coffee shops, and data traversing public cloud platforms. Suddenly, traditional on-premises solutions revealed significant limitations in meeting the demands of this decentralized, data-rich environment.

The Exponential Explosion of Data

To truly grasp the challenge, consider the volume of data a typical organization generates and manages daily. According to an IDC whitepaper, the average knowledge worker creates over 1.8 MB of data per day. Multiply this by 10,000 employees, and you’re looking at 18 GB generated per workday. When extrapolated over a year—assuming 250 workdays—that’s approximately 4.5 terabytes of new data annually (not accounting for data stored in databases or company-wide multimedia).

But these numbers tell only part of the story. Enterprises also generate data from automated processes, IoT devices, video conferencing, cloud integrations, and more. Some industry reports suggest that the average enterprise (with over 1,000 employees) may produce upwards of several petabytes annually, with the trend rising each year.

As organizations continue to digitize and handle ever-increasing volumes of sensitive information, robust data protection has become non-negotiable. Yet, many businesses still rely on traditional, on-premises data protection solutions instead of embracing the new industry trend: delivering Unified Data Security through Gartner’s Security Service Edge. This adherence to on-premises approaches often drags IT teams into a vicious cycle of infrastructure management, pulling focus away from what truly matters: protecting business-critical data.

The Hidden Burden of On-Premises Data Protection

Let’s break down the common pain points associated with maintaining an on-premises data protection environment—pain points erased by embracing a cloud-delivered, unified approach:

Hardware Procurement
Every step of improving data security starts with hardware—sourcing, negotiating, and managing physical inventory. This process incurs upfront capital expenditure, lead times, and ongoing support contracts—all before protecting a single byte of data.

Server Induction (Hardening / Patching)
Once hardware is in place, teams face the time-consuming process of OS and application hardening, ensuring up-to-date patching. Specialized skillsets and constant vigilance are required to spot and remediate vulnerabilities before exploitation occurs.

Solution Setup and Agent Roll-Out
Deploying data protection solutions on-prem means installing and managing software agents across hundreds—or thousands—of endpoints. The rollout often proves disruptive, troubleshooting becomes complex, and agents require ongoing manual updates and maintenance.

BCP / DR Drills
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are essential. Yet, with on-prem solutions, regular drills demand complex failover configurations, manual intervention, and constant teamwork across multiple teams. These exercises are resource-intensive and risk gaps if not meticulously performed.

Backup, Recovery, and Resiliency
Building reliable backup and recovery systems on-prem requires continuous monitoring, offsite storage arrangements, and stress-testing for resiliency. Storage media must undergo rotation, maintenance, and replacement—dedicated effort for just-in-case scenarios.

High Availability (HA) Setup
True HA demands redundant hardware, licensing, and network paths—multiplying cost and complexity. Any misconfiguration can lead to hours or days of downtime—unexpected interruptions at odds with today’s 24/7 business environment.

Version Upgrades
Most on-prem data protection software requires careful version management. Upgrades are time-intensive, risky, and can introduce compatibility issues requiring elaborate rollback plans.

Infrastructure Refresh
All hardware/software reaches End of Life. Every few years brings a painful cycle of costly replacements, procurement cycles, legacy migrations, and vulnerability management on unsupported systems.

Are You Managing Infrastructure or Protecting Data?

Step back, and it becomes clear: as the data universe swells and mobility becomes the norm, the on-premises security model traps organizations in relentless infrastructure management. Rather than enforcing policies and defending data, IT teams are consumed by patching, upgrades, hardware refreshes, and agent headaches. Data protection devolves into a perpetual infrastructure babysitting exercise—one that intensifies as organizational data multiplies yearly.

How the Zscaler Data Security Platform Can Help

Zscaler fundamentally changes this dynamic. As a cloud-native, unified data protection platform, Zscaler allows organizations to:

Eliminate Hardware Hassles
Eliminate capital expenditures, upfront investments, and maintenance cycles—security seamlessly scales in the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, the world’s largest cloud security platform.

Unified, All-Inclusive Data Protection
With a unified platform securing all channels, Zscaler enforces a single policy across Network, Email, Endpoint, SaaS, Public Cloud, On-Prem, and BYOD.

Stay Proactive, Always Up-to-Date
Benefit from continuous, automatic updates to threat signatures, DLP rules, and platform features—without patching or manual upgrades.

Deploy with Cloud Speed
Apply DLP and security controls across all users—office, remote, or hybrid—without intensive agent management.

Built-in Resiliency and DR
Enterprise-grade redundancy and disaster recovery are embedded within the platform—eliminating manual drills or failover plans.

Assurance of High Availability
Leave HA and uptime concerns to a globally distributed platform designed for resilience.

Future-Proof Compliance
Innovation is delivered continuously, ensuring readiness for regulatory and emerging threat landscapes. Organizations remain on secure, compliant infrastructure at all times—even as data grows exponentially.

Bringing it all together

With terabytes—or petabytes—of data spreading far beyond the traditional perimeter, on-premises models trap organizations in endless cycles of infrastructure management. This diverts valuable resources away from what truly matters: safeguarding data.

Zscaler frees IT and security teams from this treadmill—empowering them to focus on true data protection, no matter where users or information reside. In a world of accelerating data volumes and dispersion, this transition isn’t optional—it’s essential for modern, resilient security.

Ready to start protecting your data? Discover how the Zscaler Data Security platform delivers agility, scale, and security for the new era of work.