Without a proper data backup plan in place, an unforeseen incident could easily result in your business closing its doors for good. Furthermore, if you can’t demonstrate that you took every possible step to prevent the loss or exfiltration of data during or following a disaster, you could be in breach of compliance regulations. While disaster recovery planning comes with its fair share of challenges, most of these are easily overcome with modern solutions.
#1. Protecting large volumes
The amount of data generated by business activities is doubling every two years. We’ve now reached the era of big data where volumes are growing beyond a company’s ability to keep up. Businesses need to plan for the future by adopting a scalable infrastructure that can handle constantly expanding data sets. Because in-house data centers can barely keep up, the cloud has become the obvious venue for protecting ever-expanding volumes of data.
#2. Backing up virtual machines
Virtual machines are inherently easier to back up and restore simply because they consolidate entire desktop experiences in single files. However, many virtual machine images are multiple gigabytes, if not petabytes, in size, which makes them a lot harder to back up than a handful of regular documents. Again, the cloud comes to the rescue by allowing you to create remotely hosted virtual machines with automated backup routines and built-in redundancies.
#3. Securing backup archives
Perhaps somewhat ironically, backup archives often end up adding to a business’s potential attack surface. Additional storage networks with lax access controls can give attackers a way into your wider technology infrastructure, especially if they’re hosted in inadequately protected public cloud storage facilities. A backup plan must incorporate security by design and multifactor authentication controls to lock down data and prevent unauthorized access. Encryption is also a must for data in transit, as well as for your backup volumes, no matter where they physically reside.
#4. Incorporating mobile devices
Portable technology has empowered the mobile workforce like no other, but devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops are naturally at a much higher risk of loss or theft. However, much more valuable than the devices themselves is the data stored on them. The best way to keep your data safe is to avoid storing it on mobile devices altogether or at least implement automatic synchronization of business documents.
#5. Meeting compliance obligations
Many industry regulations require organizations to have a documented backup and disaster recovery strategy, but these themselves must also be compliant with the latest standards of security and privacy. Especially when moving data over to the cloud, businesses must ensure that their vendors are themselves compliant. Many managed services providers also take a share of the responsibility to comply with regulations, so be sure to look out for such a clause in their service level agreements.
Simplified IT Consulting provides fully managed IT services customized to the unique needs of your business. Call us today to schedule your free consultation.
