Redstor expert on what firms should have to safeguard their data
Heidi Weyers says secure backup is essential to any credible data management strategy

Redstor expert on what firms should have to safeguard their data

What procedures should companies have in place to safeguard their data?

By Heidi Weyers, General manager for Sales at Redstor in SA.

Given the exponential growth of data and increasing threat of sophisticated cyberattacks, there is absolutely no doubt that a secure backup is essential to any credible data management strategy.

Backup is required to ensure data can be recovered when it is most needed (for compliance due to loss or deletion or as part of a recovery test).

It is the first step in securely managing and protecting data.

Redstor has over 20 years industry experience and is an internationally recognised specialist in helping organisations keep their data secure in line with data protection laws.

Data is invaluable to organisations. Protecting it adequately is not only part of a successful data management strategy, it is also vital to meet compliance and regulatory guidelines – and ensure business continuity.

However, with some 2,500 PTB of data created daily, data is also exploding and forcing organisations to deal with capacity challenges, management issues and added security complexities.

There is a need to control data and monitor it correctly.

The cybersecurity threat landscape has changed in recent years. Ransomware is a major factor and cybercriminals are often well organised and sometimes even state-sponsored.

With this in mind, there are multiple ways that organisations can choose to perform a backup to safeguard their data.

The increased adoption and application of cloud technologies in organisations means that data can be stored in numerous places.

This is a challenge for many organisations. However, if administered correctly, the scenario could actually provide organisations with an opportunity to ensure protection, guarantee uptime and manage data efficiently.

Traditional backup technologies often output data to removal storage media for it to be securely stored offsite. To ensure data protection, any removable storage media must be securely encrypted.

Modern day cloud backup solutions offer the benefits of flexibility and scalability in addition to increasing availability, ensuring protection and helping to decrease data loss.

Cloud backup solutions easily handle the challenge of protecting data which is spread across multiple sites, servers or machines and be centrally managed. This allows IT teams to securely monitor and report on full data sets from one central place.

However, it is important to consider other implications. Downtime is costly for organisations – what happens if you lose data stored in the cloud? Can you get it back?

While many cloud storage platforms will likely keep an additional copy of data, this may not be the most secure method of recovery.

For one, this could be a replicated copy and should the data become corrupted or completely deleted, the replicated copy is likely to mirror that. For compliance or regulatory needs, retention of data stored in the cloud can become an issue.

It is vital when implementing cloud solutions, public or otherwise, to understand where data will be stored – ‘in the cloud’ isn’t an adequate answer and data protection regulation will likely state where data can and cannot be stored.

Understanding what security levels are in place and who, if anyone, has access to data at the back-end will help prevent unauthorised access.

 

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