Protect Critical Data With Cyber Security Backup and Recovery Procedure

Data backup and recovery is the process of creating copies of sensitive data and critical data from your work environment. Without backups, organizations are making it difficult to retrieve data in case of accidental deletion or from the hands of threat actors.

The need for a cyber security backup and recovery strategy goes beyond data protection. That’s because backups are essential cyber security practices that allow business continuity.

Given the importance we place on data, organizations and businesses must protect critical data by using backup and recovery tools.

This guide will go over the types of data backups and explain why every business must use backups for disaster recovery. So, with all that out of the way, let’s begin.

The Three Data Backup Types

Three types of data backup and recovery types exist. Those are:

• Full backups
• Incremental backups
• Differential backups

Let’s explain all three.

Full Backups

A full backup is a complete backup of all data in your network. Full backups can protect data on servers, databases, virtual machines, cloud environments, and more.

Given the backup scope, full backups take the longest to perform, with some full backups taking days. Of course, this all depends on the amount of data you need to back up.

Full backups are essential for any backup and recovery strategy. After all, you do need to start somewhere. Therefore, they are the first step when creating your disaster recovery backup strategy.

Incremental Backups

Incremental backups will back up the changed data from the previous incremental backup. To start with incremental backups, you must first perform a full backup. Then, the next backup will back up only the changed data.

Incremental backups are faster to perform since we’re backing up less data than a full backup. Regardless, this type of data backup is essential for preventing data loss.

Differential Backups

Differential backups are similar to incremental backups in the sense that you only back up the changed data from the previous backup. However, differential backups will back up the changed data from the previous backup.

Much like an incremental backup, you need to initiate a full backup first. Again, this type of data backup is faster to perform than a full backup.

The Three Types of Data Recovery Processes

Much like data backups, there are several ways to recover data from a backup. The backup and recovery process provides means to backup data and safely store it for later retrieval. Since we know the three ways we can back up data, let’s look at the three types of data recovery.

File-Level, Object-Level Recovery

A file or object-level recovery is the process of retrieving data quickly. Why is it fast? Because this type of recovery process focuses on files, folders, and objects from specific volumes.

For example, let’s say you have a full backup of your entire C: folder and want to recover deleted or corrupted files from your documents folder.

With file or object-level recovery, you only retrieve the files, folders, and objects from that specific volume (the documents folder in C).

Instant Mass Recovery

Instant mass recovery or instant mass restore is a data recovery process that can scale up or down depending on your needs. This process will retrieve data lost from files, folders, and even virtual machines. The process is instant and can recover at any point in time.

IT experts use this process in case of primary data failures.

Volume Recovery

Volume recovery is a data recovery process for virtualized environments. This process can recover an unlimited number of virtual machines.

These aren’t all the data recovery processes out there. But these are some of the most common ways to retrieve data from backup copies stored locally or on the cloud. So, lastly, let’s look at why you should use cybersecurity backup and recovery strategies.

The Need for Backup and Recovery

There are many ways to lose data, from hardware failure to natural disasters destroying your data centers; the risks are plenty. The data backup and recovery process hopes to fill a security gap that every organization has.

No matter how safe we think our data is, the opposite is true. What’s even more damning is that ransomware and phishing attacks are getting more prevalent by the year. Simply put, everyone is a target.

Why risk your data getting into the hands of the wrong people when you can use a backup solution as a disaster recovery plan? Not only are you minimizing the chance of losing data, but you’re maximizing business data protection.

Ultimately, everyone knows how damaging losing corporate or customer data can be. So the need for an effective backup strategy is something every business should pay attention to.

Conclusion

A backup and recovery procedure is the first and last line of your cyber defense. Not only is it an essential practice, but it’s also risk-free. Think of it as a free “get out of jail” card. Simply put, it is a means to ensure business continuity by preventing data loss.