Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan – How to Keep Your Company's Data Safe

With digital transformation, companies have become increasingly dependent on technology for most business processes. Any problem that prevents access to data, systems, or applications renders the company unable to perform its daily operations, leading to negative consequences, such as customer loss, decreased sales, and the spread of bad...

Many of these incidents are avoidable. Of course, there are also those that completely spiral out of control, but their impact on business operations can always be minimized. This is where data backups and disaster recovery plans (DRPs) come in handy.

Data Security Threats

In IT, an incident is an unplanned interruption in service or a reduction in service quality. An incident can also be a system failure that hasn't been noticed during service use. It's important to remember that a failure can be natural, environmental (e.g., a natural disaster such as a storm or flood), or the result of human action. Human actions, in turn, can be the result of intentional actions (e.g., a hacker attack, a break-in) or accidents (e.g., an accidental fire or traffic accident).

Backup: Protect Your Company Information

The basic protection against data loss is backup, which means creating a backup copy of data for quick and easy recovery if necessary. This backup can be stored locally or online.

Local Backup

The first option involves storing copies of data within your company.

There are many options for storing data locally: starting with copies on external USB drives or magnetic tapes, combined with manual data copying or using appropriate software. Another option is to use a NAS unit (whose capacity will adapt to the size of the environment) and a RAID array configuration. Both NAS and RAID are more expensive solutions, but they significantly protect data from media failure. In the event of a disk failure, the remaining installed drives remain operational, protecting data from loss.

The advantages of local backup include its relatively low cost and energy efficiency. However, performing only local backups carries risks, as the USB drive can be damaged or lost. Furthermore, there are many potential threats, such as fire, theft, or hardware failure. When using a local backup, it is important to ensure that unauthorized persons do not have access to the backup media. It's also good practice to store at least one backup copy in a location other than your company's headquarters, for example, with a company specializing in storing offline backup media.

Online Backup

With online backup, your company's most important data is stored on a secure, dedicated "external server" (IaaS) or transferred to the "cloud" (PaaS, SaaS models).

There are many advantages to using an online repository. The main ones are convenience, as it allows you to store any amount of data, and efficiency, as backups can be accessed from any location. Using the cloud eliminates the need to worry about maintenance or servicing a physical storage device; all you need is internet access. When purchasing a cloud storage service, you can often take advantage of other add-ons from cloud storage providers. For example, Google offers a free suite of browser-based office tools with its cloud storage solution.

However, online backup isn't entirely without its drawbacks. Despite increasingly advanced security measures, clouds are still vulnerable to hackers. Online backup services may seem expensive at first glance, but ultimately, they can deliver significant savings – they should be viewed as an investment in security.

How to configure a secure backup system?

Backups are typically created on multiple media to ensure there's always a copy available (for example, a local copy and another in the cloud). At Support Online, we recommend designing your backup system according to the 3-2-1 rule. What do these numbers mean? We create at least three backups, on two separate media, one of which is physically stored off-site. Proper backup configuration ensures that the owner doesn't suffer data loss in the event of an IT infrastructure failure and reduces the risk of human error.

Disaster Recovery Plan: Let Nothing Deter You

If you already have secure data, can you be completely at peace? The answer is no. A good backup is the first step to ensuring your company is protected from all kinds of problems. However, it's worth going a step further and also having a good disaster or incident plan.

What is a disaster recovery plan? Also known as a disaster recovery plan (DRP), it is a formal document that outlines the procedures to be followed to restore standard IT operations in the event of a disaster. A disaster recovery plan is part of a business continuity plan (BCP), which includes procedures for all areas of the company. The DRP focuses on restoring IT operations.

What does a DRP include?

To create a disaster recovery plan, you must first define the scope, purpose, and technology components that will be included in the plan—all those critical to the company's services or products. It is advisable to develop several strategies for different incident scenarios. Once the strategy is defined, you should outline the steps necessary to ensure the team responsible for disaster recovery can recover.

To better illustrate, a security incident could be a database failure. One strategy might be to recover the correct database from a backup. Another strategy might involve switching the company to a backup infrastructure synchronized with the production environment. Recovery procedures, in turn, will describe subsequent actions, such as notifying the appropriate teams, checking logs, conducting tests in a test environment, and so on.

The strategies and actions outlined in the Disaster Recovery plan allow the company to resume operations in the shortest possible time and with minimal information loss. The values ​​of these parameters are also defined in the DR plan using two metrics:

• The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) specifies the maximum time it will take to restore a backup, service, or environment after a disaster. It is typically measured in hours, minutes, or even seconds. The shorter the time, the higher the costs of maintaining the backup infrastructure, but also the greater the stability of business operations.
• The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) determines the maximum amount of data that can be lost as a result of a failure affecting the environment or application.

What will DRP do for me?

• Implementing a DRP will minimize the risk of data loss and protect against the negative consequences of a failure in your core infrastructure.
• It minimizes downtime within the company, allowing you to maintain good business relationships with customers and suppliers even in the face of security incidents.
• It also minimizes the stress associated with decision-making: in extreme situations, it's important for everyone to know how to proceed, from the lowest to the highest level in the team.
• It ensures compliance with security audit requirements, such as ISO 27001.
• From a marketing perspective, outages – even those lasting a few minutes – can also cause reputational damage, and DRP mitigates this.

No company can afford long periods of inactivity, so it's important to ensure data security in advance. When choosing a provider of IT support, backup, or data recovery services, it's important to ensure that the proposed solutions are scalable and tailored to your needs.

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