The importance of data backup and protection has grown exponentially in recent years due to the rise of cyber threats and major disasters. Hard drive crashes and other data disasters are all too common in the United States, with about 140,000 hard drive crashes occurring every week. In addition, every five years, 20% of SMBs suffer data loss due to a major disaster. These factors have helped to drive a robust cloud backup market that continues to grow.
However, simply backing up data is no longer enough to protect it from today’s growing cyber threats. Data backup has now evolved into data protection, which requires additional cybersecurity measures to ensure the safety of data backups. Online backup services offer many benefits, such as convenience, accessibility, and effectiveness, but there is a need for certain security considerations to ensure the safety of stored data. Companies must take data protection into consideration when planning a backup and recovery strategy. The tools and solutions used must protect against the growing number of cyber threats, including data center outages, sleeper ransomware, supply chain attacks, and misconfiguration of security settings. As such, it is important to choose a data protection backup system that provides adequate protection against these threats. One important feature to look for in a backup solution is ransomware prevention. Ransomware is a growing threat that can infect any data within a network, including computers, servers, mobile devices, and cloud platforms syncing with those devices. In fact, 95% of ransomware attacks try to infect data backup systems. A backup solution that includes ransomware protection will restrict automated file changes that could potentially infect documents. Continuous data protection is another important feature to look for in a backup solution. This feature ensures that the system captures the latest file changes, mitigating data loss that can occur if a system crashes before the next scheduled backup. With the speed of data generation today, losing even a day’s worth of data can be very costly. Threat identification is another important feature to consider. This tool proactively protects files by identifying and preventing malware from infecting new and existing backups. It helps to stop sleeper ransomware and other malware from infecting all backups. Zero-trust tactics are another critical aspect of data protection. This approach promotes ongoing authentication for all users and applications, including measures such as multi-factor authentication and application safe listing. Some of the zero-trust features to look for include multi-factor authentication, distinct file and folder permissions, contextual authentication, and verification of permissions for file changes. Backup redundancy is also essential. If you back up to a USB drive or CD, you only 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, which 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. For highly sensitive data, air gapping is an additional feature to consider. Air gapping is a system that keeps a copy of your data offline or separated in another way. This entails making a second backup copy of your data and putting it on another server that is disconnected from external sources. This helps to ensure that you have at least one other copy of your backup that is walled off from common internet-based attacks. In conclusion, data backup and protection have become critical aspects of today’s business operations. Cyber threats and major disasters can strike at any time, and businesses need to be prepared with the right backup and data protection solutions to keep their data safe. When considering a backup solution, look for features such as ransomware prevention, continuous data protection, threat identification, zero-trust tactics, backup redundancy, and air gapping for highly sensitive data. With the right data protection solutions in place, businesses can rest assured that their data and businesses are safe. Feel you are lacking proper protection? We can help contact us for an evaluation! Comments are closed.
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AuthorJim Schmidt Archives
May 2024
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