Data Backup Considerations

Data is vital to modern businesses. Some say it's the life blood of a business. After all we live in the information age.

But do we all protect data and information to the best of our abilities? Do we ensure we can recover from its loss, corruption or theft?

In information security parlance are we properly protecting its CIA - Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability?

Data Backup Considerations

Most businesses take some steps to backup their data. This can be using traditional methods such as tape drives to newer techniques involving optical media, removable USB storage or even online backup solutions.

If you're not backing up your data then you should be. It's inexpensive and might just save your business one day.

But backing up your data is only half the story. Having a backup is meaningless if you can't recover your data in the event of an incident.

You need to test that you can restore your data on a regular and random basis. This exercises your solution and ensures it is actually doing what you expect of it.

Another consideration is the age and technology used. If your infrastructure, devices and backup software are more than a few years old you may have other problems should you experience a significant incident or disaster with your systems.

If your incident takes out your current infrastructure can you replace it to actually recover your backups?

Without compatible technology and software your data may be inaccessible without expensive and time consuming 3rd party services.

Then there are online solutions. There are many of them out there and they are fairly inexpensive but which one should you choose?

Depending on the data and the legal or regulatory requirements you may need to think very carefully. Your data may fall under one jurisdiction while it's residing on your servers and PCs in your office but whose jurisdiction is it under the control of on the backup storage? What are their data protection, privacy and security laws like?

Another important consideration is whether the service you're looking at complies with your local Data Protection legislation and safe harbour provisions? If it doesn't and you are storing personally identifiable information (PII) you could find yourself or your company in court should something go wrong.

Finally, you need to identify if the data will be stored encrypted in a way where only you can access it. Otherwise there is always the potential that the staff of the service provider or data centre hosting company can access your data without your permission.

These are all things you need to consider when selecting a backup solution. It isn't a simple choice based on price so think carefully and ask the questions above. They might just stop you going out of business.

Data Backup Considerations
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Lee Hezzlewood is the founder of Secure Thinking, a UK company providing specialist services in Data Protection and Cyber-Security. For more information on information security for SME businesses take a look at our Managed Security Services.

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