An “Air Gap” is Crucial

Start by looking at what accounts can access the backup software and the backup storage. Are credentials for that software or storage shared with the system(s) being backed up? If so, it may be possible for a common ransomware attack to encrypt your backups! Make sure you have an “air gap” separating backup software and storage from your network.

During a backup we move data across our network and probably across the public Internet too. Make sure that data is encrypted from point to point, or you could lose control of confidential information and face a costly and embarrassing problem.

And how about physical access? Thankfully the days of putting a backup tape in your pocket and heading home from the office are mostly over! With that said, it’s important to have local backup storage in a secure space.

Your Encryption Prescription

What if the door to your business gets broken into? Making sure backups are encrypted will prevent the outright theft of hardware from becoming a data breech. Most systems can support “at rest” encryption but it needs to be setup, and the decryption keys need to be stored in a secure place. This is especially important for offsite “cloud” backups where you may not have any access to the hardware.

Making sure your backups are secure takes a little planning, but if you know what you need and take the time to put it in place, your data will be protected and remain yours for keeps!

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Some data is of very high value, and some is far less so. A healthy percentage of what most businesses backup isn’t really data at all!  How’s that you might ask?  Servers run an operating system that gets patched and many also run applications of some kind.  These things can technically be reconstructed via a reloading and reconfiguration process. Older archive data may be substantial in size and very low in value.  So, the temptation to backup only the most important stuff can be driven by cost. The more backup storage you need, the higher the cost of the solution!

Before you decide to pick and choose, think about various scenarios in which restoring an entire system may be required. How long would it take to reload and patch the operating system? How long to reload and patch the applications? What problems might occur in that process?  Just finding software activation keys can turn into a scavenger hunt that increases downtime in such an event. 

Strategic Data Backup Plan

Most businesses will ultimately want to back up everything to avoid excessive downtime in a recovery situation. Putting the whole system back to an earlier healthy state is usually the fastest thing to do and downtime can be very costly.

But many also look to offload flat files and/or archives to inexpensive cloud storage to avoid excessive BDR costs. Services like One Drive, SharePoint and Wasabi offer reliable storage that is well suited to this purpose. You may gain more flexibility in who and how this information is accessed as well!

Don’t forget that although cloud storage is generally very reliable, it can still be lost and should also be backed up. Stay tuned for another blog about how to back up your cloud data!

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