Backing Up Your Data Isn’t Enough
Having a data backup has been a necessity since the dawn of floppy disks. Viruses, hard drive failures, and other errors can lead to major data loss. Data loss is something that happens to the majority of technology users at least once. But nowadays, backing up your data isn’t enough, you also need data protection.
There are an average of 140,000 hard drive failures happening every week in the US. Plus, every 5 years SMBs will suffer a major data loss due to a significant crash. This is a driving factor for the robust backup market we have now.
One aspect of data backup that continues to change over the years is security. Having a data backup is no longer sufficient to prevent data loss. The replacement is now data protection.
What does this mean for you?
What this really means is your backups require more cybersecurity protections. Backups face threats like supply chain attacks and sleeper ransomware. There are advantages to having a cloud backup like convenience, accessibility, and effectiveness. But while using an online service, there are also some security precautions to take into account.
When developing a backup and recovery strategy for your business, it’s important to consider Data Protection. The tools you use need to be protected against the growing number of threats.
Threats to Data Backups Include:
Data Center Outage
In essence, the term “cloud” refers to data on a server. The server is accessible over the Internet. These servers can crash. There are outages that can also occur to the centers that hold your data.
Sleeper Ransomware
This is a ransomware attack that stays silent after infecting a device. The intention of this attack is to try and spread to every backup. That way when the bad actor activates the infection, the victim doesn’t have a backup to restore to.
Supply Chain Attacks
Supply chain attacks are at an all-time high. This includes attacks on cloud vendors that a company uses. When these vendors experience a cyberattack, it can spread among their customers.
Misconfigurations
Security settings that are not properly configured are a big concern. Misconfigurations give attackers access to cloud storage. After that, the attackers can download and remove files as they like.
What to Look for in a Data Protection Backup System
Data backups alone are no longer sufficient. You want to ensure the application you are using offers adequate data protection. Here are a few backup solution criteria to consider.
Ransomware Prevention
Any existing data has the possibility for a ransomware infection, that can spread throughout a network. This includes data on computers, servers, and mobile devices. It also includes information from cloud services that sync with said devices.
Any data backup system you employ must offer ransomware protection. The automated file changes that can be made to documents are limited by this kind of feature.
Continuous Data Protection
Continuous data protection is a feature that can back up files as users modify them. This is different from systems that back up on a schedule, like one per day/week.
Continuous data protection makes sure the system captures any file changes as they happen. This reduces the risk of data loss if a system fails before the subsequent backup. The speed in which data is created means losing even a day of data can be very expensive.
Threat Detection
Data protection includes taking proactive measures to protect files. In a backup service, look for threat identification functions. Threat identification is a form of malware and virus prevention.
It scans both recent and historical backups for malware. This helps prevent the infection of all backups with sleeper ransomware and related malware.
Backup Redundancy
You only have one copy of the files if you backup to a CD or USB disk. You might lose data if something occurs to that duplicate.
Backup redundancy should be implemented by cloud backup providers. In other words, the server hosting your data mirrors it to a different server. In the event of a server crash, a natural disaster, or a cyberattack, this protects data loss.
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