Data Protection Overview
Data protection refers to the process of guarding data and information from compromise, corruption, or loss. With a massive amount of data generated, analyzed, and used daily, the importance of data protection has increased significantly in the past years.
As businesses need to maintain data integrity and accuracy to continue functioning smoothly, various data protection software and systems have to be employed. Aside from this, adapting cloud-based and web-based technologies can also harness data security.
Generally, data protection describes the operational backup of data and business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR). Its strategies move along the lines of data availability and data management.
Data availability guarantees that the users have the data required to run a business even if the information is damaged or lost. Meanwhile, data management, focuses on data lifecycle management and information lifecycle management.
Data lifecycle management refers to the automation of movements of critical data to online and offline storage. On the other hand, information lifecycle management is a comprehensive approach for valuing, cataloging and keeping information assets from application and user errors, malware and virus attacks, machine failure, or facility outages and disruptions.
Data Protection Strategies
In order to protect your data, storage technologies in the form of disk or tape backup are used. Information are copied to disk-based storage or a tape cartridge device. Another data protection strategy is mirroring. It is the process of replicating websites or files so they are available in more than one location.
Storage snapshots generate a set of pointers to information stored on tape or disk, enabling quicker data recovery while Continuous data security makes a copy of all the data in an enterprise whenever a modification is done.
In the recent times, using cloud backup is also becoming dominant. Organizations choose to move their backup data to their preferred type of cloud. These backups can substitute on-site disk and tape libraries and serves as additional copies of data.
Backing up files has been an effective strategy in data protection. Files are copied, typically at the end of the day, to a tape drive or tape library. In the event that something goes wrong with the primary data storage, the backup data stored in the library can be accessed and used to restore lost or compromised information.
Data Protection Trends
No. 1: Ransomware
Ransomware is a form of malicious software that can deny you access to your data. The attacker then, asks a ransom from the victim and in exchange for this, the access to your data will be restored.
While traditional backup processes can be used to safeguard data from threats of ransomware, sophisticated versions have been circumventing it.
The latest version of the malware penetrates the organization's data over a period of time. The organization ends up backing up the ransomware alongside the data without them even knowing. As a result, this makes it hard for them to get a clean version of the data. To resolve this issue, vendors are working on adapting backup and recovery solutions to stop the ransomware capabilities.
No. 2: Hyper-convergence
Hyper-convergence is an IT framework that merges storage, computing, and networking into an individual system. It aims to reduce the complexities involved in data centers. Hyper-converged platforms mainly consist of a hypervisor for virtualized computing, software-defined storage, and virtualized networking. They usually operate on standard, off-the-shelf servers.
With the arrival of hyper-convergence, vendors have been providing backup and recovery for physical and virtual environments using hyper-converged, non-hyper-converged and mixed structures. Data protection capabilities combined into hyper-converged framework are replacing a number of devices in the data center.
No. 3: Copy Data Management
As backup software and other enterprise applications operate independently, they usually create multiple copies of similar data. This wastes storage space and affects network performance as well as the ability to restore and access critical information. To minimize storage consumption, copy data management (CDM) is used to eliminate the unnecessary duplication of data using data virtualization.
Copy data management software often works by creating one full virtual copy of the data. Once unique changes are made, the software creates and stores a snapshot of modifications at the block level.
No. 4: Disaster Recovery as a Service
Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) refers to the replication and hosting of physical or virtual servers by a third party vendor. In case of an actual catastrophe, an off-site vendor is less likely to suffer the direct and immediate effects, allowing them to implement a disaster recovery plan.
Swift Systems: Data Protection
If you are looking for reliable IT solutions that ensure the highest level of data protection, check out Swift Systems. We follow industry-best practices for security policies and regulatory compliance, and we select best-in-class security products to minimize risk. Get in touch with our team today!