Data loss is one of the biggest concerns of any company these days. In fact, corporations are increasingly investing in solutions to prevent this from happening. Therefore, it is ideal to follow back up and restore best practices. For, only they guarantee efficient protection.
So, if you are an MSP or work in the IT market, you know the importance of backup as the main measure for data protection.
That’s why today we’re going a little deeper to show you which actions are essential to ensure more security for the companies you serve.
Want to know how to protect your customer data? So, keep reading and see more information throughout the text!
What is Information Security?
Before talking about backup best practices, let’s remember the meaning of the Information Security (IS) concept.
It is an idea that aims to maintain the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of a company’s data. Learn more about each of the terms:
- Confidentiality: property that limits access to information only to legitimate entities. That is, those authorized by the owner of the information;
- Integrity: ensures that the manipulated information maintains all the original characteristics defined by the owner of the information. This includes change control and life cycle assurance (birth, maintenance, and destruction);
- Availability: ensures that the information is always available for legitimate use, that is, by those users authorized by the owner of the information.
In this sense, the ISO determines a series of guidelines for IS. Among them, we can mention:
- Copy in a remote location (cloud);
- Automated copies;
- Backup encryption;
- Periodic recovery test;
- Data retention;
- Backup records/documentation.
The importance of ensuring safety measures for your customers
Undoubtedly, in addition to applying good backup practices, it is ideal to bet on a data security policy to offer even more peace of mind to the customers you serve.
Thus, it is possible to reduce the risks of incidents, and even improper manipulation of data.
In addition, through good practices, which are extremely important for the safety of its customers, it is possible to minimize the impacts caused by a given threat, through the monitoring of 5 pillars. See each of them below:
- Vulnerability: these are weaknesses that can become “open doors” for a possible threat;
- Threat: She is seen as the likely cause of an incident, which could lead to damage. In fact, the threat also has an “agent”; one that will exploit system, site, or application vulnerabilities ;
- Risk: can be defined as the probability calculation of a threat, which may arise from a given vulnerability. Thus, for example, it is possible to identify which weaknesses are most at risk of being affected;
- Incident: is the manifestation of a threat agent in an attempt to affect the weaknesses present in the system;
- Damage: are the negative result of an incident. That is, they are the main factors that the SI seeks to minimize or exclude.
Data Protection x Information Security
Now that you know the guidelines to determine a safe environment for your customers in the digital world, you need to understand the differences between the concepts of Data Protection and Information Security.
First of all, the General Data Protection Law (LGPD), enacted in August 2018, defines measures on data collection, storage, processing, and sharing, with a view to ensuring the protection of data for Brazilian citizens.
This direction has positive impacts, as it reinforces the constitutional right to privacy, provided for in Art . 5, which deals with the non-violation of privacy.
The concept of IS, as stated earlier, defines the protection of a set of information against vulnerabilities, whether they are exploited intentionally or not, reducing the impact of disasters that may occur.
But, it is worth remembering that many companies disregard or superficially apply both the LGPD rules and the IS standards.
However, both precautions must be applied together, to ensure the effectiveness of your customers’ security and data protection processes.
By the way, on our blog, we list ideal actions for good IS practices.
As you know, measures offer a number of advantages for companies. But, to be successful, it is necessary to bet on adequate and more efficient tasks for the current market.
To help you choose the ideal path, below, we’ll show you the best data backup and recovery practices. Check out!
Use cloud storage
N-able Backup has the primary storage of data in the cloud. In fact, it is important to note that only with remote storage is it possible to guarantee that data is safe no matter what problem may occur (human error, software failure, hardware failure, natural disaster, etc).
keep the regularity
In fact, one of the best backup practices is to perform this service several times a day, that is, to have several daily backup jobs. After all, the higher the frequency, the shorter the period of data loss in the event of a disaster ( RTO and RPO ).
In fact, with the N-able Backup solution, regardless of the volume of data, it is possible to have several daily backup routines.
To act this way and ensure that data is protected.
Determine the retention period
In addition to defining the regularity of the services, the tip is to define the number of days that you will keep each backup. Having a solution that, even with the increase in the retention period, does not have an impact on storage, adds value and will be the differential of your offer.
Monitor your backups
Undoubtedly, monitoring is part of the best practices for enterprise data backup and restoration. Because, only it guarantees that when a restore is needed, the data can be restored.
Therefore, invest in improvements in the monitoring process. After all, the goal is to improve and analyze more backup routines to avoid losses.
Follow the 3x2x1 rule
Using the 3x2x1 rule is essential to validate your backup solution. Incidentally, only options that meet this rule can be considered backup solutions.
In this sense, the 3x2x1 rule requires your company to have three copies of the information, two stored on different types of media and one stored outside the corporate environment.
Train your team
In addition to following all the measures we have already mentioned, it is essential that you train the professionals on your team (commercial and technical).
Because only in this way it is possible to commercialize and provide the backup service to its customers. In addition, only through training and simulations will your team be able to meet customer demands in cases of data restoration. Thus ensuring a more agile, optimized, and specialized service for the customer.
Bet on a safe and complete solution
Finally, we know that meeting all the data backup and restore demand without a good solution is impossible. Therefore, choose a tool that meets as many scenarios as possible.
In addition, also worry about purchasing the solution from a vendor that masters the best data backup and recovery practices.
In fact, having the support of a specialized team is the best way to guarantee the success of your backup service, in addition to accelerating your learning with the solution.
Most common mistakes when making a backup
In addition to including good practices in your day-to-day, understand that there are mistakes that can be avoided so that the backup service offered to your customers is optimized.
Among them, we can mention the lack of adaptation to the infrastructure, aiming only at the volume of data.
In this way, see what resources are available from your partner, so that the entire process of adapting to the new data backup and recovery system takes place in the right way.
So, check for pending updates and the version of the operating system used on the computers. In addition, it is important to adapt the server, checking the validity of the warranty, for example.
Another point to be considered is the impact that carrying out the backup process will have on the company’s functioning. Likewise, note the need for data protection and system vulnerabilities, which must be reported to perform the service.
Finally, measuring the costs of the entire process is a very important action for your client. Well, it is necessary to define the best options for the scenario in which he is.
Therefore, paying attention to the needs and budget can be a differential to meeting the demands of your customers and have an increasingly positive result.
Advantages of betting on good backup practices
Undoubtedly, the measures we cite throughout the text are just some of the best data backup and recovery practices.
With them, your Data Backup and Restore offer can obtain advantages such as:
- Better data protection;
- Ease of restoration;
- Time optimization and cost reduction;
- Data availability, among other benefits.
But, on our blog, we have other content on the topic.
So, if you want to know a little more about the subject and find out how to find the ideal option for your daily life as an MSP, click here and read a text full of tips!
