Bullet Proof Backup Strategy

Economies have gone global and with it businesses have too. The internet is the main channel over which all transactions that fuel this financial powerhouses, are sent across. You and your business organisation are no exception to it. Chances are high that you and your choice of computer (Mac or Windows) is a part of an internal network, the network  which facilitates communication and all other necessary resources required to be productive and get the job done.

Data is at the very heart of this entire machinery. Take an average business for example, all data, financial, operational, personnel, almost everything resides in digital format on our servers and our computers. Physical copies have mostly but disappeared, thanks to the sheer cost and logistics involved with maintaining them makes them all but impractical. This  makes data a valuable asset to the company and with waves of malware, other cyber threats menacing personal privacy and threatening the operations of businesses across the world. It is imperative that businesses take steps to safeguards to protect them and their data. We have covered steps that you can take protect against malware in this video. In this piece, we take a look at a checklist of things that you can implement to up your backup game.

backup (băkˈŭpˌ)

• n. A reserve or substitute.
• n.  Computer Science A copy of a program or file that is stored separately from the original.
• n. Support or backing.

Wikipedia defines backup as “In information technology, a backup, or data backup, or the process of backing up, refers to the copying into an archive file of computer data so it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event”

Create a backup Schedule

Backup is not something to be put on the fringes of a “to do list”. Schedule the backups & mark your calendars. You may consider automating the backup via cron jobs and softwares like Jenkins (if your solutions are hosted) and third party applications like Arq. Schedule for daily backup followed by weekly backups (in an event of a failure, the more fresh the backup is, the less the data you lose). Proper automation will help you optimise your time and allow for concentration of your efforts.

Multipronged backup approach

Spread your eggs among multiple baskets. Take your backups on cloud services like Google drive, Onedrive Etc. A lot of these services are free and if you exceed your free quota, you can pay a small subscription, upgrade. If you are the types who’d like to have an ironclad service, go for Amazon S3. Once you have cloud backup squared off, lets focus on local backup. Keep at least 2 local copies handy, locally. Implementing multiple backups in multiple   locations provides redundancy. This redundancy ensures that in an event of failure, you will have multiple copies to build back from.

Offline, Air gap that backup!

You know what a firewall is, let’s introduce you to Airwall.

Air gap means not connected to any network, or even powered off state. As a part of redundancy, take a couple of backups in portable HDD, then unplug them put them in a closet. I leave it upto you to decide how to swap the HDDs. Malware take mere minutes to run amok over networks and infect all the copies of the backup on the local network. In such a scenario, an unplugged backup remains safe from malware and can be used reliable to build back the compromised systems.

Test recovery

Now that you have a backup plan in place all is not quite finished, not quite yet. Run dummy backup exercises whenever time permits.

Why do you ask? Well, nothing sucks more than a backup copy that won’t work. That’s why regular testing of the backup plan and the viability of the backup files must be carried out.

These points along with the safeguarding of your enterprise IT infrastructure will insure that data loss events, if the happen, are not cost and time intensive and recovery will be swift and painless.

If you like more content like this delivered to you in box, please subscribe to our mailing list.