The data community saw seemingly endless challenges over the past year, including increased ransomware attacks and new security vulnerabilities. For instance, Log4j, an open-source logging library used by apps and services is just one of the recent examples of a technology identified as being vulnerable to security attacks. As vulnerabilities and possible threats increase, our data continues to grow in criticality. Here are just a few important things from the past year that we wouldn’t have if it weren’t for file data: the research for new technology that can detect early signs of more than 50 types of cancer; football season; the new Batman film; advancements in electric car and ADAS technologies; and your personal work files that you’d be completely lost without. In 2022, celebrating World Backup Day feels more significant than ever.
Backing up unstructured file data comes with obstacles. The size and complexity of individual files make it time-consuming to identify which files are modified or need protecting, and traditional backup solutions are not cut out to sustain the increasing volume of data perpetually being created. But protecting your valuable file data doesn’t have to be daunting, especially with help from Qumulo.
In honor of World Backup Day, we’re sharing the five best ways to incorporate massive-scale file data backup and recovery tactics into your systems.
Need to know: 5 Backup & recovery file data tactics
1) Your backup solutions should grow with your data
Your data’s growth isn’t slowing down. And the amount of data growing in your system can outpace your IT or security team’s ability to back up and protect it. You need a backup solution that can keep up.
Qumulo can scale and adapt to the constantly changing needs of your petabytes of data, billions of files, and millions of operations in real time. Qumulo Secure is built into this capability, automatically securing your data with software-based encryption as it scales by integrating with corporate IT security systems and tracking usage by internal users.
It’s important to explore all implementations of backup and recovery. For example, Qumulo Protect also provides a robust set of corrective controls such as snapshots, data movements to AWS S3, backups, and snapshot replications which allow files to be copied back from a previous version and prevent malware from changing its content since snapshots are immutable (read-only). And Qumulo Shift allows you to copy data to native AWS S3, so a secondary version of your data is always accessible from an AWS S3 browser that can be replicated across multiple locations.
2) Only a holistic approach can protect your file data infrastructure
Threats can come from anywhere – even your internal employees. In the past year it was more likely than not that a group of malicious actors approached employees from your organization to help commit a cybercrime. According to a study from Pulse, 48% of employees surveyed were directly contacted to assist with ransomware attacks against their companies.
Rather than focusing on just external threats, organizations need a comprehensive security solution that takes both internal and external vulnerabilities into account. These solutions should understand applications in today’s file data environment aren’t siloed and the only way to protect an organization from dangerous and sophisticated security threats is by implementing a holistic, always-on defense strategy.
Qumulo offers diverse and abundant data services that allow customers to build a comprehensive strategy. Here are a few ways how:
- Advanced security features that target the key areas of prevention, detection, and correction
- Qumulo Recover Q takes action when there’s suspicious activity to stop the ransomware from gaining access to subsequent layers, including your file data storage.
- Qumulo’s API allows the initiation of automated mitigation actions from any point of entry, should a malicious activity be detected
If you want to read more about Qumulo Recover Q, check out its recent accolades for Best Cloud DR / Business Continuity Solution or this recent blog post on getting to know Recover Q.
3) Reduce Data Blindness To Decrease Data Loss
Many storage systems don’t tell you about the specifics of how and where you’re using data, leading to what some people refer to as data blindness. Data blindness prevents you from seeing an accurate picture of what’s happening in your file system or the details about how your data is being transformed and manipulated in real time.
Qumulo’s systems are built for full visibility, which help answer critical questions about your data like what needs to be safely archived or backed up. Another way to decrease data blindness is to require viewing access across management systems, so you can always see what’s happening within your internal applications. By gaining greater visibility into our data, we can get a handle on who is accessing our data and where to decrease the likelihood of losing data to a malicious malware or ransomware attack.
4) Prepare for the worst with business continuity and data recovery
What if you didn’t back up your data and disaster strikes? It’s not the end of the world – if you have disaster recovery. Developing a strong business continuity and disaster recovery plan requires proactive steps to defend data storage systems, detect suspicious access patterns, and ensure rapid response for ransomware recovery.
If your data is compromised, start by undoing the damage. Try reverting to the last good version of your data. Snapshots, data retention policies, consistent or tertiary sites, like the cloud, will all add layers of defense.
5) Act now – before it’s too late
Prevention is the best medicine, and it’s imperative to plan your backup and recovery ahead of time. If your data is compromised before you have the right protection plan in place, the smallest breach can set your systems back and the data loss can be insurmountable.
That’s why it’s never too early to start thinking about a backup and disaster recovery strategy. To find out more about best practices and solutions that will keep your data storage protected, download our white paper on security architecture, or check out our full suite of data services.
