As ActiveSys has stressed many times, lately several companies, national and international, have been targets of strong virtual attacks, such as ransomware attacks.
In addition, the digitalization leveraged by the pandemic, made the technologies become increasingly complex, with more lines of code, increasing, consequently, the potential vulnerabilities.
In the era we live in, characterized by Big Data, data security and accessibility are two of the most important assets of an organization. For this, having implemented a backup and disaster recovery policy is essential to safeguard indispensable information, allowing you to respond to an incident that leads to loss of information more quickly.
In order to minimize the damage caused by hackers with malicious intent or computer disasters that lead to loss of reports, personal files or relevant data, it is therefore crucial that your organization has a backup strategy.
What is a backup anyway? It is a partial or full copy of the most valuable files found on electronic devices, from pictures, contacts, sensitive work documents, account access data, among others.
If done periodically, it helps preserve confidential information and data.
When a backup is made, the theft of these documents and personal data is avoided, as well as the loss of information due to malfunction or theft of the electronic device, infection by computer viruses or disasters caused by accidents or theft.
What, then, are the most common reasons for data loss?
- Hardware Failures– Hardware failures can lead to the loss of information housed in servers.
- Human Action– To err is human and we can unconsciously delete valid data. However, malicious and intentional intervention can happen that leads to data loss.
- Virtual Attacks– We have already mentioned the increase in ransomware attacks, which bring data security into question. With backups in place, access to data is faster, allowing all information to be safeguarded.
- Natural Disasters– Storms, earthquakes, floods, among other natural variables that pose a real threat in these situations, as they can lead to power outages.
There are several ways to make a backup, the most recurrent being cloud storage, a virtual place where data is organized and only accessed by those who have the proper permissions. Using this method brings some advantages such as accessibility to the files, anywhere and anytime, from any device, as long as it has an Internet connection. In addition, the fact that it is virtual avoids dropping or damaging the equipment. Thus, this method stands out for its low cost, high scalability and security.
However, the safest bet is to make a backup both physical and virtual, since, in this way, the data is stored, safe and accessible in two spaces. It should be emphasized that when creating a backup you should take the time to organize the files and information that you want to back up. This way you are aware of what you are saving and where.
It is also recommended to store the data in a geographical location away from the Data Center or server, since in case of failure of the local infrastructure, the information can still be recovered.
The backup policies should be defined according to the needs of the entity, and may be stipulated for all existing information, or only for specific content. Given this, two indicators are used to define a backup system, which reflects the importance that an incident has on business continuity and company survival:
- RTO (Recovery Time Objective)– Period of time that an organization’s services can be unavailable without jeopardizing the business. It is based on the time it takes to restore an organization’s systems and data in the event of a failure.
- RPO (Recovery Point Objective)– Volume of data and information that can be lost during an incident. Ideally this parameter should be 0, i.e. no information should be lost, and for this there should be a backup policy.
The contents to be included in the backups is something very personal. Everything that has high value and cannot be easily replaced should be at the top of the list.
Backups are like health insurance, we don’t intend to use it, because it would be a bad sign, but we should always have it, because the cost of losing the data is undoubtedly higher than making a backup.
ActiveSys can help in this process, keeping your personal data protected and private information safe. Please feel free to contact us for more information.