A backup for your backups: immutable data protection

30th May 2022BlogTom Richards

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Strengthen your cyber security with immutable backups

With immutable copies of data automatically preserved on your primary storage array, you can enhance the resilience of your business even when cyber security measures fail.

Cyber security is a mature and highly effective branch of information technology. Enterprises rightly invest large amounts of time and money in protecting their key data and systems against penetration, theft, corruption, and deletion. And it certainly pays to keep doing so in a world where cyber attacks strike on average every 39 seconds.

However, cyber security providers and their clients are forever engaged in a high-stakes arms race with sophisticated cyber crime organisations—some of which have access to state-level funding and technology. In practical terms, this means that your cyber security measures—however sophisticated—will be found wanting at some point.

Traditionally, backups constituted a last line of defence against cyber crime, but advanced malware can silently propagate through multiple levels of backup, encrypting as it goes. For any systems and sets of data that your organisation absolutely cannot afford to lose, you need to add cyber resilience on top of your existing cyber security measures.

Northdoor can help you:

  • Assess your existing cyber resilience capabilities, at no cost
  • Set up automated immutable backups
  • Enable extremely rapid recovery to known good data.

Don’t wait for a major security breach: send us a message or call us on 020 7448 8500 to arrange your free cyber resilience assessment.

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Immutable backups, close at hand

In our highly digitised world, practically every organisation depends on reliable access to data and information systems. This fact puts every organisation in the firing line for cyber attacks, whether they’re scattergun or highly targeted. And while modern cyber security measures such as intelligent firewalls, Privileged Access Management, vulnerability scanning and penetration testing continue to provide significant protection, there’s always a risk that a devastating attack will succeed.

Taking the pragmatic view that a successful breach will occur at some point, your organisation needs not only protection against attacks but also the ability to recover rapidly after an incident. Indeed, for organisations in the financial services and insurance industries this recently became a statutory requirement with new FCA Operational Resilience rules.

An easy and highly effective cyber resilience measure is to keep additional copies of backups on immutable storage. In the past, this typically meant relying on “cold” archives: tape media kept offline and offsite. But if you need to recover in hours, not days or weeks, that approach is no longer fit for purpose.

With IBM FlashSystem Cyber Vault and IBM Safeguarded Copy, you get the best of both worlds: secure, immutable copies of data that are stored on your primary storage array for ultra-high-speed recovery.

Prepare for tomorrow’s challenges

If you already use FlashSystem, you may be aware that the ability to make immutable backups is baked into all FlashSystem arrays and available from code release 8.4 upwards.

Regardless of your current storage vendor, Northdoor offers a free-of-charge Cyber Resilience assessment that provides a scored report with suggestions for enhancements. While we are one of the few IBM Platinum partners in the UK, we also work with other leading vendors. So even if FlashSystem is not for you, we can advise on, implement, and support a world-class solution for cyber resilience.

To learn more about how Northdoor can improve your cyber resilience and minimise the potential disruption in the event of a security breach, email us, get in touch via our website, or call us on 020 7448 8500 to arrange a free initial assessment.

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