Offsite Backup is an Important Part of Data Security

Most people think of firewalls and access controls when they think of data security. Virus protection, data encryption, and password security are some of the components of data security strategies. Spam and spyware detection has also become important in efforts to protect data at home and in corporate networks. Typical home users and business people may not have explicitly designed and implemented a data security strategy, but they are usually aware of the obvious threats. Regardless of whether a formal data security plan has been created or not, the objective should include protecting data from any eventual loss or exposure.

Threats to your data do not always involve intruders, unauthorized access, or malicious code. Depending on your operation and procedures, the biggest threats may be related to human error. Accidental deletion or errant updates can be just as damaging as a virus or hacker. A software update or configuration change may also have unexpected consequences to data. There are countless other ways that data can be lost or corrupted. The cost and consequences of lost data is the same regardless whether it is caused by a virus, hacker, internal threat, mistake or other cause.

One must also consider that new threats surface everyday. Virus protection software can't guarantee that every virus will be detected before damage is done. Firewalls block most unauthorized access from the outside, but do little to stop malicious code that is attached to an email or downloaded from a website.

The last safety net for your data is your backup. Furthermore, your offsite backups are your only protection against certain threats that may data at your primary location unavailable. For example; stolen equipment may include your backup hardware and data that was located in your home or place of business. Retention of backup data is also an important part of the defense. It is not uncommon for a problem to go undetected for days or weeks, meaning that your backups also have the same problem. The ability to restore data from retained backups can be a lifesaver in certain situations. Besides the obvious need for a data backup system to protect against hardware failures, the backup data is also an important defense against security threats.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Backing up your data is absolutely critical for any business, and even for personal users. If you don’t have a backup and disaster recovery plan in place, your company is virtually guaranteed to fail in the event of a data loss.
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