Discover 6 Secrets You Must Look for In A Data Protection Backup System
- Ransomware Prevention
- Continuous Data Protection
- Threat Identification
- Zero-Trust Tactics
- Backup Redundancy
- Air Gapping for More Sensitive Data
The need for data protection has been around since the advent of the floppy disk.
Viruses, hard drive crashes, and other accidents can all lead to data loss.
You will struggle to find anyone who has not experienced this firsthand.
According to WeTribunal, there are about 140,000 hard drive crashes in the US every week, and 20% of SMBs suffer data loss due to major disasters every five years.
This has fuelled a booming cloud backup market.
In the last few years, however, data backup has changed in one key way:
Security.
It's no longer enough to just back up data to stop it from being lost;
Data protection is now essential.
What does this mean?
It means that backups need more cybersecurity protection. They face threats such as sleeper ransomware and supply chain attacks. Cloud-based backup has the benefit of being convenient, accessible, and effective. But there is also a need for certain security considerations with an online service.
Your company needs to think about data protection when planning your backup strategy.
You need to have tools that protect against the growing number of threats
Some of the modern threats to data backups include:
- Data Center Outage: The “cloud” just means, data on a server somewhere else. The server is internet accessible. Just like any other server they can crash. Data centers holding the servers can also have outages.
- Sleeper Ransomware: This ransomware is designed to stay silent after infltrating a device. The goal is to get into all your backups.
When it is finally activated you won’t have a clean backup to restore from.
- Supply Chain Attacks:
This is another growth area. What happens is a cybersecurity attack happens at one of your vendors. When they are hit, you will also get hit.
- Misconfiguration: Security settings incorrectly configured can be a security problem.
It can allow cybercriminals, to gain access to your cloud based data.
They can then download files and delete them as they choose.
What Should You Look For In A Data Protection Backup System
Just backing up data isn’t enough. You need to make sure the application you use provides adequate data protection. When looking for a backup solution here are some of the things to review.
Ransomware Prevention
Ransomware can spread right across a network like wild fire infecting any data that exists. Including data on computers, servers, and mobile devices. It doesn’t stop there it will infect data in cloud platforms syncing with those devices.
95% of ransomware attacks also try to infect data backup systems.
It’s a must that any backup solution you choose has protection against ransomware. This type of feature restricts automated file changes that can happen to documents.
Your backup solution must include ransomware protection
Continuous Data Protection
Continuous data protection is a feature that will back up files as users make changes. This differs from systems that back up on a schedule, such as once per day.
Continuous data protection ensures that the system captures the latest file changes. This mitigates data loss that can occur if a system crashes before the next backup. With the speed of data generation these days, losing a day’s worth of data can be very costly.
Threat Identification
Data protection incorporates proactive measures to protect files. Look for threat identification functions in a backup service. Threat identification is a type of malware and virus prevention tool.
It looks for malware in new and existing backups. This helps stop sleeper ransomware and similar malware from infecting all backups.
Zero-Trust Tactics
Cybersecurity professionals around the world promote zero-trust security measures. This includes measures such as multi-factor authentication and application safe listing.
A zero-trust approach holds that all users and applications need ongoing authentication. So, just because a user is logged into the system today, doesn’t mean they are completely trusted.
Some of the zero-trust features to look for include:
- Multi-factor authentication
- Distinct file and folder permissions
- Contextual authentication
- Verification of permissions for file changes
Backup Redundancy
If you back up to a USB drive or CD, you have one copy of those files. If something happens to that copy, you could experience data loss.
Cloud backup providers should have backup redundancy in place. This means that the server holding your data mirrors that data to another server. This prevents data loss in the case of a server crash, natural disaster, or cyberattack.
Air Gapping for More Sensitive Data
Air gapping is a system that makes sure your valuable data is kept offline or separate from your network. Which means your would have a second copy of your data. This could be putting it on another server. That server would be disconnected from external sources.
This is a feature that you may want to seek out if you deal with highly sensitive data. It helps to ensure that you have at least one other copy of your backup. A copy walled off from common internet-based attacks.
Need Help With Secure Backup & Data Protection Solutions?
At Great It services we want you to have peace of mind knowing your business data, is backed up and secure.
If you are in Manchester or Bolton please get in touch and we will, advise you on what will work best for you and your company.
Get in touch Now.
Great IT Services Bolton and Manchester Tel 01204216040 or 07810025154
