One of the most terrifying crises an enterprise will face is the hacking of their data or the hostile takeover of their servers, a practice carried out with malicious code known as ransomware. Production coming to a halt is the smallest worry of these situations - costs to repair, replace, and reformat drives can be extensive and even then is no guarantee that all data will be recovered. And, in some industries there are serious legal and business consequences in response to breaches of customer data. But what about cloud data storage? That offsite data can be the most vulnerable. To counteract this, it is critical that all businesses maintain a backup system should a server be compromised.
Microsoft, a PaperFree partner, offers one such solution in its Azure Backup product, which has been designed with the security of cloud data in mind. Azure Backup works with a three step approach to security:
- Prevention: New authentication layer added for critical operations like Delete Backup Data, Change Passphrase. These operations now require Security PIN available only to users with valid Azure credentials.
- Alerting: Email notifications are sent for any critical operations that impact availability of backup data. These notifications enable users to detect attacks as soon as they occur.
- Recovery: Azure backup retains deleted backup data for 14 days ensuring recovery using any old or recent recovery points. Also, minimum number of recovery points are always maintained such that there are always sufficient number of points to recover from.
By having a proactive backup system offered in a product like Azure Backup, administrators can react quickly - as a hacking is underway - to secure their systems. But when all else fails Azure Backup is also a cloud-based backup system - meaning that its secure data servers allow customers to restore their production and backup systems from its secure backups. All of this comes together for a measure of peace of mind for businesses that want to protect their data.
PaperFree is happy to direct you to the resources you need for proper and secure data backup - just give us a call! To learn more about Microsoft Azure Backup please visit their website.