Without a backup, a company can quickly lose out in terms of RTO, RPO or ransomware. With the right strategy for backups, IT does not stand still even after an attack. The free white paper "Why is backup actually so complicated?" provides the right answers to many questions.
A backup serves to protect against data loss. If an original is lost, you still have a copy as a safeguard, as a "backup". This is how easy data protection could be in a world without RTO and RPO, ransomware and natural disasters. But today, an IT administrator has to give far more thought to what a secure, reliable, and affordable backup strategy looks like.
From backup to recovery strategy
A fundamental paradigm shift is decisive for the increasing complexity of a backup environment. For a long time, it was mainly about creating a final safeguard against data loss that you hopefully will never need again. But nowadays it is necessary to implement a comprehensive and functioning strategy in order to reliably restore data at different depths and speeds at any time. Ransomware has greatly increased the likelihood of this need for data recovery.
The cause: ransomware
With ransomware, human error—accidental deletion or misconfiguration—is no longer the primary reason for data loss. And in turn, data loss is no longer the main reason for the need for recovery. Ransomware encrypts user data so that access is no longer possible. The result: IT stands still, which leads to high costs due to failure, recovery and the actual ransom payment. In addition to protection against infection, the most important measure is therefore a functioning backup strategy.
It is no longer sufficient to back up the data using the long-established "B2D2T" logic ("backup to disk to tape") in order to quickly restore individual files from disk and complete data sets from tape. Targeted ransomware attacks now first attack backups before the actual user data is encrypted. By the time IT realizes what happened, backups are often unusable or deleted. This also happens with tape copies if they have not been physically removed from the system (air gap).
The consequences for the backup strategy
The increased ransomware attacks have four key implications for backup strategy, leading to increased complexity. You can read about the consequences of this and what you can do to counteract the complexity of your backup model in the free white paper "Why is backup actually so complicated?". Because the goal can only be: reduction of complexity.
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About FAST LTA the FAST LTA is the specialist for secure secondary and long-term storage systems. The combination of durable and low-maintenance hardware, integrated software for data backup and on-site maintenance contracts with a term of up to 10 years ensure long-term, cost-effective storage of data from archive and backup applications. In-house developments such as local erasure coding, sealing using hardware WORM and efficient energy management help medium-sized customers to protect themselves against data loss through ransomware attacks and misconfiguration and to meet regulatory and legal requirements (GDPR). The Munich provider's solutions have proven themselves in thousands of installations in healthcare, public administration, film/TV/video and industry.