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Use backup and business continuity planning to protect data
The data backup strategies and habits you enact during normal business hours might be the difference between maintaining business continuity and a lengthy, difficult recovery.
Data backups contain the systems and data that organizations need to recover and resume operations after a crisis. Secure, frequent backups are critical to maintaining business continuity.
Data backups protect data, systems, databases and other information resources from unauthorized access, hacking, ransomware and other malicious activities. Backup administrators create copies of mission-critical information and store them in secure storage facilities.
Disaster recovery (DR) and IT teams can use these backups to get systems up and running during a crisis or provide mission-critical information to key customers or stakeholders. The success of the recovery might depend on the quality of the data backups, so up-to-date copies must be accessible to administrators or other necessary parties.
Business continuity is a set of activities initiated to help return a business to normal operations following a disruptive event. While both are often overseen by IT to some degree, backup and business continuity are separate processes within an organization. However, the success of an organization's backup strategy can determine how quickly and efficiently that business can resume normal operations.
Creating strong backups
Business requirements determine the frequency of backups and type of backup storage used. During normal operations, businesses should regularly back up data to on-site or off-site storage facilities, or a combination of both. This will look different for each organization, depending on the types of data being backed up and the infrastructure in place.
For example, financial organizations that need immediate access to customer data will likely want to create backups frequently so that the customer data will be available and accurate during transactions. In situations like this, customer data is likely to be mirrored to another storage facility upon creation of or change in data.
These storage resources might be on-site in storage arrays located in a data center, or they might be located off-site, such as in a cloud storage service designed for data mirroring. Many different options are available for data backups, based on the business's needs.
Cloud-based backup storage services are widely available from leading cloud vendors, such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. They are also available from managed service providers that offer an array of backup services. Organizations also have many options for on-site storage. It is not uncommon to see a blended arrangement for data backups, combining on-site storage for mission-critical data and third-party storage for all other backups.
The major challenges facing backup administrators are selecting the most cost-effective storage configuration possible and establishing a regular program of data backups and tests. It is just as important to regularly test backup systems to be sure that data is being backed up properly and is readily available as it is to establish backup policies in the first place.
Using backups to aid business continuity
Backup and business continuity are separate practices, but they both depend on adequate preparation. Data backups are equally as important during normal business operations as they are during a disruptive event, and business continuity planning must be done before a crisis has struck.
Once a disruptive event such as a power outage, hurricane or cyberattack has occurred and ended, affected organizations must return to normal operations as soon as possible to minimize the potential loss of business and reputational damage. This is the goal of business continuity, and it can be made easier by the groundwork that backup admins have put into place.
Good business continuity practices can also help bolster a backup strategy. For example, when running business continuity and disaster recovery tests, IT administrators might be concerned that on-site backups will not be readily available in a particular crisis. In that scenario, the organization might choose to add off-site backups, such as those stored in the cloud, to mitigate these concerns.
Paul Kirvan, FBCI, CISA, is an independent consultant and technical writer with more than 35 years of experience in business continuity, disaster recovery, resilience, cybersecurity, GRC, telecom and technical writing.
