Data backup security

Backup trends of 2019: Acquisitions, funding and CEO changes

The acquisitions, funding rounds and CEO changes among backup vendors so far this year hint that even more changes are coming. Experts weigh in on the trends in backup we've already seen in 2019. Continue Reading

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• Johnny Yu

Carbonite CEO joins IDG, interim CEO steps in

Former Carbonite CEO Mohamad Ali joined tech media company International Data Group as Steve Munford stepped in to become interim CEO. Continue Reading

By

• Johnny Yu

How can I integrate cybersecurity and backup planning?

Your organization should integrate its cybersecurity and backup processes. It's easy for a cyberattack to affect backups, unfortunately, so be proactive about it. Continue Reading

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• Paul Kirvan

Acronis CEO: 'Backup is dead'

Backup alone is not enough, according to Acronis CEO Serguei Beloussov. True data protection involves a combination of security, privacy and accessibility on top of backup. Continue Reading

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• Johnny Yu

How to recover from a data backup failure and move forward

Backup failures don't need to cause a long-term crisis for your organization. Make sure you're ready for this unfortunate possibility with these practical best practices. Continue Reading

By

• John Edwards

GDPR and backup: What have we learned in one year?

A customer's deletion request continues to be a sticking point regarding backup and GDPR compliance. Learn guidance about this issue and others, following GDPR's first birthday. Continue Reading

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• Nick Cavalancia, Techvangelism

Ransomware protection tips include offline storage, user education

Ransomware resilience continues to be important because the problem isn't going away. Explore these backup and education tips to help stay out in front of the issue. Continue Reading

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• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

5 biggest data backup mistakes -- and how to avoid them

Don't let a backup blunder hurt your organization or career. Here are five common, yet potentially disastrous data backup mistakes you must avoid at all costs. Continue Reading

By

• John Edwards

What is a good backup test frequency?

You should align your backup testing with the frequency of backups. This way, IT assets will not only be backed up, but also validated as ready for use in an emergency. Continue Reading

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• Paul Kirvan

These VMware and third-party VM backup tools make your job easier

With the right tools and resources, VM backup and recovery can be easier. Consider factors such as product compatibility and future business needs before deciding what to use. Continue Reading

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• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor

6 VMware VM backup best practices you should know

Understand these six crucial best practices for backing up and restoring VMs on your ESXi host. These strategies will ensure backups are protected and restoration is successful. Continue Reading

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• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor

VMware VM backup strategies combine tradition with new methods

Different VM backup and restoration approaches can favor consistency, speed or simplicity. Consider which you value most, and tailor your methodology to that. Continue Reading

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• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor

Use the command line for ESXi host backup and restoration

Backing up and properly restoring VMs are essential tasks for workload protection. Use a command-line interface, such as vSphere CLI or PowerCLI, to back up and restore the ESXi host. Continue Reading

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• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor

What are some server and data migration best practices for backup?

Are you ready for your next data migration project? Take the Myspace migration failure as motivation to implement data source and backup best practices. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

How has ransomware recovery changed in recent years?

The threat of ransomware has evolved over the past few years, causing many organizations to re-examine how they plan to recover data in the event of an attack. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

How will CCPA compliance affect your backup storage?

The new California privacy act creates more rights for consumers and their data. As a result, organizations holding consumer data will need to modify their backup approach. Continue Reading

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• Nick Cavalancia, Techvangelism

How to protect backups from ransomware infiltration

Your ransomware backup protection strategy needs to address advanced persistent threats that encrypt files over time. Learn how to restore backups to avoid a payout. Continue Reading

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• Alastair Cooke

Data leak exposes list of Rubrik backup customers

A security snafu left a server containing Rubrik customer information -- including names and contact information -- exposed. Rubrik claims no customer-owned data was leaked. Continue Reading

By

• Johnny Yu

Ransomware backup strategy guidelines to help ensure recovery

Ransomware backup best practices are critical, as one attack can cripple a business. Here are three areas to focus on for optimal protection against ransomware. Continue Reading

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• Nick Cavalancia, Techvangelism

Protect backup from ransomware attacks and recover safely

Ransomware continues to get smarter and more sinister. Make sure you protect backups from ransomware that delays detonation and gets recovered into production. Continue Reading

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• Nick Cavalancia, Techvangelism

Data backup security measures to take ahead of a hurricane

In this firsthand look, IT and storage expert Brien Posey details how he secured data backup and other important system elements as Hurricane Florence approached. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

GDPR right to be forgotten and backups: What are potential problems?

Removing personal data from a database is a simple process, but eliminating that information from full backups could undermine the integrity of your data. Proceed with caution. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

What 3 issues can affect your data backup procedures?

Do you have challenges with your data backup process, such as a lack of the right security? The three directives here will help with your overall business continuity. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Kirvan

How blockchain data storage may revolutionize the enterprise

Blockchain for data storage promises to bring added trust, reliability and security to storage, but is it ready to become a mainstream technology? Experts offer their views. Continue Reading

By

• John Edwards

CEO: Veeam database exposure fixed, investigation launched

Veeam co-CEO Peter McKay said there's 'no excuse' for the exposure of a marketing database and millions of email addresses. He said the company is being proactive in its response. Continue Reading

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• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

Preventing ransomware attacks is a top storage vendor claim

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Preventing ransomware attacks is a top storage vendor claim

Storage vendors advance silly and not-so-silly claims about how data backup and protection technologies are the answer to ransomware prevention and growing ransomware fatalism. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

4 tips for backup infrastructure maintenance

Like a car or any other important machine or device, backup architecture should have a maintenance plan. This process will help ensure the health and integrity of your backups. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

What backup security measures protect against data breaches?

Backup security varies across different storage media. What works for tape-based backup may not work for disk backups, so plan your data protection strategy accordingly. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Can you recover from ransomware? Take our quiz and find out

Ransomware recovery is a complex, often expensive process. Are you prepared in the event of an attack? It may be time to ask yourself the difficult (or perhaps easy) questions. Continue Reading

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• Erin Sullivan, Senior Site Editor

Iron Mountain data recovery adds ransomware protection

The isolated nature of Iron Mountain's latest Iron Cloud offering is important to its battle against ransomware. The Virtual Cleanroom provides an offline recovery environment. Continue Reading

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• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

What's new with data protection systems? Everything

The next backup hardware you purchase will likely come with integrated backup software. That changes the buying dynamic and complicates the decision-making process. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Use object storage technology to fight ransomware infection

Done right, object storage reduces the likelihood of a successful ransomware attack and, in some instances, lets you get data back without paying a ransom. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

Protection from ransomware requires layered backup, DR

A strategy for protection and successful recovery from ransomware includes everything from monitoring tools to offline storage. Organizations should use multiple methods. Continue Reading

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• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

GDPR backup and data protection: Five steps to implement now

Time is running out. If you haven't yet determined how to comply with the strict GDPR data protection rules, you better get started. Storage and backup play key roles. Continue Reading

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• John Edwards

Can integrating data protection and management work?

While you may want to jump on the data management and protection train, consider first how combining the two in one product will affect your systems and users. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Want IT resiliency? Look to both security and disaster recovery

Security, protection from hackers and ransomware, disaster preparedness and disaster recovery are all means to the goal of resilient IT infrastructure and business processes. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

Ten ways to protect intellectual property and trade secrets

Industrial espionage is on the rise, and more data means more risk. Find out how to control the growth of data stores and secure your organization's most valuable assets. Continue Reading

By

• Randolph Kahn, Kahn Consulting Inc.

How ransomware variants are neutralizing data backups

The latest iterations of ransomware aim to undercut backups as an effective method for recovering from attacks. Learn how to overcome this vulnerability. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

The EU's GDPR will make us better storage managers

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation has organizations worldwide rethinking storage management to their and their customers' benefit. Continue Reading

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• Rich Castagna

How ransomware variants are neutralizing data backups

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The EU's GDPR will make us better storage managers

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The future of flash storage: Is NVMe right for your enterprise?

Cracks in the SAS and SATA protocols started to appear with the rise of SSDs and the exponential performance improvements they delivered over HDD technology. This led to the development of the nonvolatile memory express protocol to exploit flash's potential. As the future of flash storage, NVMe addresses many of SAS and SATA's shortcomings by, among other things, connecting storage devices closer to the processor to reduce latency and introducing parallelism using multiple I/O queues and greater queue depth to match flash's ability to process many requests in parallel -- something SAS and SATA drives can't do. NVMe SSD adoption is leading to new storage architectures and helping give rise to disaggregated approaches to storage. NVMe-based devices come at a cost premium, however. Find out if and when you should move to NVMe and what the best use cases are for the future of flash storage and your enterprise.

Monetizing malware through ransomware has led to massive financial losses for companies worldwide. Ransomware is a megabillion-dollar industry and is becoming more sophisticated all the time. Although data backup restoration remains the best way to deal with a ransomware attack, it's no longer foolproof. It's time to rethink your organization's backup and restoration processes, acknowledge the hidden dangers of replication and revisit your permissions model to strengthen your defenses against the ransomware threat. Here's how.

Economic espionage, the theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, is another threat U.S. companies face. It can be rogue employees with access to company information doing the stealing, but most often, cybercriminals commit the crime. Effectively combatting economic espionage requires implementing a range of IT measures covered in this article.

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GDPR personal data requirements mark key business actions

Implementing GDPR is not a choice for organizations holding EU citizens' data. These organizations must know their data, identify individuals involved and review data management. Continue Reading

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• Chris Evans

Are you ready to comply with GDPR requirements?

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The best enterprise storage systems and services of 2017

For 16 years, Storage magazine and SearchStorage have recognized the best enterprise storage systems with our annual Products of the Year awards. For this year's competition, vendors submitted new and upgraded products from the past year across five categories, including backup and disaster recovery hardware, backup and DR software and services, software-defined storage, storage arrays and storage management tools. Judges for the competition included consultants, users, analysts and Storage magazine and SearchStorage writers and editors. They assessed products based on innovation, performance, ease of integration, ease of use and manageability, functionality and value. Of the 47 finalists, only the best enterprise storage systems won coveted gold, silver or bronze to become one of our 2017 Products of the Year.

Time is of the essence. If you haven't started getting ready for the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it is time to start. GDPR goes into effect May 25, 2018, and is designed to protect EU residents' privacy and personal data by specifying rules, processes and technologies organizations must follow or use. Noncompliance -- both major and minor -- could lead to significant financial penalties that climb high enough to put some companies out of business. Compliance isn't optional; it's a must. While it won't be easy -- in some cases, particularly so -- to meet the GDPR's 87 pages and 99 articles of specifications and regulations, it isn't impossible. Read on to find out everything you need know about GDPR, see what it means for your organization and, most importantly, learn how to make sure you're not on the short end of the GDPR compliance stick.

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Are you ready to comply with GDPR requirements?

Compliance with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation isn't optional. Noncompliance could be costly and possibly disastrous. Find out what you need to know. Continue Reading

By

• Marc Staimer, Dragon Slayer Consulting

GDPR data protection officer role and responsibilities

The data protection officer, required for many organizations to be compliant with the EU's GDPR, will face challenges in the new role but could improve how data is handled. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

How can I encrypt backups for better data protection?

Don't let backup data encryption fall through the cracks. When encrypting backups, key management and compression are just two of the best practices for optimum security. Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Trends in data storage 2018: Five hot techs to watch

Our hot data storage technology trends for 2018 include predictive storage analytics, ransomware protection, converged secondary storage, multi-cloud and NVMe over Fabrics. Continue Reading

By

• James Alan Miller, Senior Executive Editor

Your top five ransomware backup and recovery questions answered

Are you worried about ransomware? If not, you might want to reconsider. Proper preparation and a backup strategy are vital to staying afloat once a ransomware attack occurs. Continue Reading

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• Erin Sullivan, Senior Site Editor

Oracle RMAN (Oracle Recovery Manager)

Oracle RMAN (Oracle Recovery Manager) is a utility built into Oracle databases to automate backup and recovery; it includes features not available in third-party backup tools. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo
• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

Get smart with cloud backup security through 'CIA'

Encryption is just one important element of backup data security in the cloud. Ask the right questions of your organization and your cloud provider to make sure your data is safe. Continue Reading

By

• Alastair Cooke

Use Microsoft Azure Key Vault to protect your data backups

The Azure Key Vault can serve as data backup protection through its encryption key storage management. Explore how to set up the vault and administer it in your organization. Continue Reading

By

• Brien Posey

Restoring data from backups after a security breach

Once you've established how an attacker penetrated your network's defenses, and what they did after gaining access, the real work of restoring data begins in the wake of a security breach. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

How to dispose of unwanted backup media

Brien Posey looks at the inherent problems with backup media disposal. Because it contains sensitive data, you must dispose of it safely. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

Pros and cons of backup tape encryption

Independent backup expert Brien Posey outlines what's good and what's bad about backup tape encryption in this tip. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

Tape backup encryption best practices

Tape backup encryption is being used for many organizations, but figuring out how to implement it can be challenging. Learn about tape encryption best practices in this article. Continue Reading

By

• Jeff Boles, Taneja Group

How to back up encrypted files and how to use the Encrypting File System

With data backup security being such a high priority, more organizations are encrypting the contents of their file servers. Although encryption improves security, it can complicate an organization's backup efforts. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

Data backup and recovery technology tutorials

Learn about the latest data backup and recovery technology trends in our technology tutorials. Continue Reading

How to back up and restore a certificate store

One type of server that is critical to back up is your enterprise certificate authority. If you lose your certificates, you lose data. Continue Reading

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• Brien Posey

Data deletion or data destruction?

It's often assumed that once data has been marked for disposal, it no longer requires much attention. But when data backups or archives are deleted, are they really gone? Continue Reading

By

• Pierre Dorion

How to destroy data on backup tapes

This tip offers guidelines for destroying data on backup tapes, with information about degaussing, tape cartridge destruction, tape reuse and record keeping. Continue Reading

By

• Rick Cook

Guide to backup security

News of a lost tape can damage a company for years. Storage administrators are increasingly relying on encryption technologies to guard sensitive data on tape, disk or WAN. Continue Reading