Ensuring your company is equipped with a data backup and recovery service can provide peace of mind and preserve the continued prosperity of your business. It’s an especially critical element of cybersecurity today, when ransomware, malware, phishing and other hacking efforts are increasingly targeting businesses of all sizes.
Not planning for this need effectively means you are rolling the dice every single day you are in business. A single mistake or hacking attack can mean that years of data will be lost forever.
Safeguarding data is a big deal because data is the lifeblood of modern industry. Data powers operations, provides insights and inspires innovation. Unfortunately, these opportunities also come with risks. Today’s ever-evolving threat landscape includes external threats such as ransomware or malware, as well as internal threats, including human error, acts of sabotage or theft.
Start Safeguarding Internally
At BrightFlow Technologies, part of our data backup and recovery service involves educating our clients’ teams to spot external threats and deal with them correctly. Unfortunately your team members are also among the greatest threats to your business. Recent events bear this out:
- A former IRS contractor recently pled guilty to a federal charge of stealing tax return information on some of the wealthiest people in the nation, then leaking that information to the press. Those affected include Bill and Melinda Gates, Jeff Bezos and Donald J. Trump.
- A large medical service provider had an administrator leave their employ, but not before stealing data on patients, then publishing that information on the internet. This case is now part of a class action lawsuit involving millions of patients.
- When an attorney intends to depart a law firm to another, or set up their own practice, suspicion and uncertainty often beset that transition. That’s because there have been multiple occasions where attorneys stole confidential data on their clientele, to help them succeed at their new firm. Naturally, these cases are also the subject of a class action lawsuit.
These situations are why the team here at BrightFlow Technologies recommends building a “zero trust” architecture into our clients’ information systems. Zero trust is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that secures an organization by eliminating implicit trust and continuously validating every stage of a digital interaction.
Zero trust is designed to protect modern environments and enable digital transformation by using strong authentication methods, leveraging network segmentation, preventing lateral movement, providing Layer 7 threat prevention, and simplifying granular, “least access” policies.
Zero trust was created based on the realization that traditional security models operate on the outdated assumption that everything inside an organization’s network should be implicitly trusted. This implicit trust means that once on the network, users – including threat actors and malicious insiders – are free to move laterally and access or exfiltrate sensitive data due to a lack of granular security controls.
Protected and Accessible Data
However, there’s more to that than just finding the best cloud storage for business and implementing zero trust architecture for data backup and recovery services. Below, we outline five tips that can help you to ensure your data is protected, and available when you need to access it.
1. Built In Redundancy: AKA Backups of Backups
Although having a single, complete backup of your business’s files and computing network is better than nothing, it’s still not all that secure. Both you and your cloud storage provider could be affected by the same malware. Or a regional disaster like an earthquake or hurricane could destroy digital infrastructure both at your offices and at your cloud data center.
So, it’s essential that your backup and recovery strategy includes multiple backups. Ideally, your data should be mirrored at multiple data centers that are thousands of miles apart. Even better, store your data with multiple cloud vendors so that your files live on multiple, disconnected networks.
2. Automate Scheduling
If you have to remember to backup your files to the cloud, there’s a chance that sooner or later you’re going to forget to do it. If that happens, your business could potentially lose days’ or even weeks’ worth of critical data in the event of a breach.
Thankfully, you can rely on automation. Most business cloud storage providers offer software that helps you designate files for backup and recovery, and then keeps them synced to the cloud. Look for the option to run incremental backups, which can help reduce the amount of bandwidth your backup regime requires.
Occasionally, you’ll also want to run large backups that include your network applications and company databases. Try scheduling these to upload overnight so they don’t suck up network resources during the workday. Following a back up plan should be part of the data backup and recovery service you choose.
3. Employ End-to-End Encryption
Most businesses need to backup at least some sensitive data, such as customer information, billing details or employee records. Even if your data isn’t necessarily sensitive, you don’t want all of your company’s files to leak out in the event that your network or a cloud provider are hacked.
That’s why encryption is so important when it comes to backing up data to the cloud. Your cloud provider should offer end-to-end encryption so that data is encrypted before it ever leaves your computer. Even if a hacker is able to steal files from your backup, the files cannot be decrypted without your company’s key.
4. Track Changing Regulations
Your business’s obligation to follow privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) doesn’t end when you send your data to the cloud.
In fact, it’s up to you to make sure that your data will be stored in compliance with all applicable regulations. Be sure to ask your cloud storage provider about what steps they take to achieve this compliance.
Another thing to consider when comparing data backup and recovery service plans is whether your data will be stored in the same country as your business. Storing data internationally can sometimes cause regulatory headaches, especially if you’re backing up sensitive customer data. In addition, some countries have stronger data privacy laws than others. Always know where your data will be stored and how it could affect your data privacy.
5. Pay Attention to Recovery Time
When your business network goes down, every second of the recovery process matters. For most companies, a day without data means a day without revenue. Downloading terabytes of application data, databases and files from the cloud can take weeks. But many cloud providers will put a complete copy of your business backup on a hard drive and mail it to your business overnight. This type of courier service can enable your business to get back up in running within a day or two.
Backing up your data to the cloud is an essential part of protecting your business against hacks and system failures. But signing up for a storage platform isn’t on its own a reliable backup and recovery solution. You need to establish a robust plan that considers elements like data security, redundancy and recovery time. With all those pieces in place, you can feel assured that your business is ready to bounce back from any data loss event.
Data Backup and Recovery Service for You
When choosing a data backup and recovery service, don’t go it alone or try to reinvent the wheel. More than 200 global companies have chosen our managed services, called BrightCare. We strive to be your partner and a member of your team, to save you time and money. Just contact us, so we can learn more about your company and its needs.
