Is it sufficient to simply back up your data?

What's up with backup?

In today's digital age, generating data at an unprecedented rate is the norm. As a result, data backup has become an integral part of our lives. It is essential to back up all our important files and documents regularly to safeguard against data loss. However, solely relying on data backup may not be enough to protect your data from cyber attacks, theft, and other malicious activities. It is safe to say that in today's digital age where everyone's using technology, we have all experienced data loss at least once in our lifetime.

It is crucial to understand that data backup and data protection are not interchangeable terms. While data backup is a critical component of data protection, it is not enough on its own to safeguard data. Data backup is reactive and only comes into play after data loss has occurred, while data protection is proactive and seeks to prevent data loss and breaches from occurring in the first place.

Data protection goes a step further by implementing additional measures to safeguard your data from potential threats. It involves implementing additional measures to safeguard your data against security breaches. These measures include implementing strong security protocols, such as access controls, firewalls, and encryption, and regularly monitoring and auditing your systems to detect any potential threats.

What does it all mean?

In today's world, backups must be extremely secure, particularly due to threats like sleeper ransomware and supply chain attacks. Although cloud-based backup is convenient, accessible, and efficient, it is essential to prioritise security when using an online service. Therefore, businesses must make data protection their top priority when creating a backup and recovery plan. It is critical to meticulously select the tools that will be used to ensure the highest level of data security.

As technology advances, data backups face various modern threats. One of these threats is data centre outages. The cloud relies on servers that are accessible through the internet, and these servers can crash. Additionally, the data centres that hold these servers can also experience outages. Another threat is sleeper ransomware, which silently infects a device and targets backups. Once activated, victims may not have a clean backup to restore. Supply chain attacks are also becoming more common, including attacks on cloud vendors that companies use. These attacks can quickly spread to their clients. Lastly, misconfiguration of security settings can allow attackers to gain access to cloud storage and manipulate files as they see fit.

A Managed IT service provider like Workflo Solutions ® can help you devise a comprehensive data protection strategy to implement necessary data protection measures effectively. Workflo Solutions can provide ongoing support and maintenance to ensure your data protection measures remain effective and can help you stay up-to-date with the latest security threats and technologies.

Our Advice

It would be highly advantageous to determine your risk profile and the corresponding necessary features when developing your data protection strategy.

Here are a few things you should keep in mind when picking a backup system to make sure your data stays safe and recoverable.

• Ensure your data backup solution is protected from ransomware attacks. Look for features that restrict automated file changes in documents.
• Use continuous data protection to back up files as users make changes. This mitigates the risk of losing valuable data in case of a system crash.
• Look for a backup service that offers threat identification functions, which can detect malware in new and existing backups, preventing sleeper ransomware and similar malware from infecting all backups.
• Apply zero-trust security measures, such as multi-factor authentication and application safe listing, to ensure ongoing authentication for all users and applications.
• Use backup redundancy by choosing cloud backup providers that mirror your data to another server. This prevents data loss in case of a server crash, natural disaster, or cyberattack.

By implementing a comprehensive data protection strategy, businesses can better protect themselves against data loss and breaches, maintain business continuity, and safeguard their reputation and trust with customers.