Why Creating Backups Is A Leading Cyberdefense Strategy

Of all the various cybersecurity tools that businesses now have at their disposal, one is often overlooked. Creating backups is a way of forging a second, third, or even fourth copy of all of the data your business has. In the event of a cyber attack, businesses can resort to these backups to restore their data, preventing a malicious actor from completely stalling their operations.

Yet, despite the fact that 91% of businesses use backups, not every organization does so to the same extent. For example, 62% of businesses will back up their own application data, while only 28% will back up any R&D data that they generate. This approach comes back to a lack of understanding of the importance of backups. We’re all told to create them, but when businesses only do this in a cursory manner, problems can arise. 

In this article, we’ll dive into the world of backups, demonstrating why they’re essential in a comprehensive, modern cybersecurity defense initiative. Let’s dive right in.

Why Are Backups So Important?

Data is currently the most important tool that a business has at their disposal. It encompasses personal data, customer information, financial details, and even future business plans. Moreover, businesses can utilize data insight to forge data-driven decision-making strategies, furthering their potential to succeed.

With that in mind, backups are a vital partner of a data strategy as they allow businesses to protect their most valuable resources. Of course, organizations will always use cyber defense strategies to secure their investment, providing layers of defense that can keep their information safe. In a perfect world, these defenses would be more than enough.

However, as the cybersecurity sector continues to develop, so does the nefarious world of cybercrime. The last decade has seen the growth of crime in this sector by over 300%, an incredible figure that quantifies the danger that many companies are currently in. 

Backups prevent many worst-case scenarios:

• Hardware disasters – If a critical event happens in your local data storage, such as a failure of a data wipe, then a backup ensures you can continue your business as normal. Without one, a hardware failure would signal the loss of all your data up to that point, a critical failure that few businesses can overcome without significant losses. 
• Ransomware – If an employee falls into a ransomware attack where a malicious actor holds your business data at ransom, a business can use a backup to continue working despite the ransom situation. Without a backup, they are held to the attacker’s will, often giving them much more bargaining power and causing the event to cause more damage.

While not the only events where a backup provides use, these are two of the most prominent scenarios where it’s worth having one (or two!).

What Are Common Data Backup Strategies?

Organizations that engage in creating and securing backups don’t all follow the same pattern. Some businesses may just have one singular backup; others might create several and distribute them across different platforms. While there isn’t a hard and fast rule, it’s always a good idea to create as many as you can.

The only downside to creating backups is that each of them requires maintenance and storage space. Of course, the more data you have to secure, the more resources the creation and storage process will require. Due to that balance, many businesses may attempt a few different strategies until they find one that works for them.

Here are some common backup strategies:

The 3-2-1 Method

The 3-2-1 method is one of the most popular in the security industry when it comes to creating and distributing backups. This strategy bases its storage on a three-pronged approach, with two local data backups and one off-site. Typically the two on-site backups will also be stored within a different device, providing another layer of security for your documents.

This strategy also allows businesses to back up their data with changing frequencies. For example, they may partner with a cloud provider where they regularly update backups, while updating the local backups less often. The convenience of backing up to the cloud makes it one of the easiest ways to continually update your content repositories.

In the case of a disaster in any one of your data backups, you’ll have two – typically completely different – safeguards to keep your business running smoothly.

The Redundancy Method

Another common strategy that businesses may use when attempting to reduce the likelihood of data loss in their organization is the redundancy method. A redundant backup strategy is the process of creating several copies and distributing them across various sources. The central idea behind this strategy is that if one of your backups fails, you’ll still have several that you can turn to.

This strategy was much more popular around a decade ago because hardware failures were much more likely then. However, with the vast adoption of cloud data warehousing, businesses can partner with a provider that can often have a much higher uptime and world-class security. Due to this, most businesses will simply use a cloud data warehouse and store their data there.

However, the idea behind this strategy still works extremely well. By taking stock of all of the different platforms that you have available to you – whether on-premise, cloud or a tertiary local storage facility – you can take a multi-platform approach to boost the overall security of your backups. 

A complete replica on multiple platforms, especially considering how reliable the cloud is, might be overkill. However, you can produce duplications of your most important content and store it across multiple platforms, giving you as much security as possible and mitigating the worst-case scenarios of a disaster event. 

Final Thoughts

Backups are a vital part of an effective cybersecurity strategy. We don’t live in a perfect world despite how advanced our security tools are. There is always a chance of a cyberattack capturing your company data or a simple hardware failure fragmenting your data repositories. Data backups are the solution to these problems, acknowledging that disasters can strike and preparing you for the worst of it.

Whether you opt for the 3-2-1 strategy, a redundancy approach, or something else altogether, the most important thing is to start with something. A backup strategy will develop over time, allowing your business to continually improve its last line of security defense. The best time to begin to back up was the day your business began, the second best time is today.

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