Why backups are important

Emails containing viruses are accidentally opened every day and important files are often mistakenly deleted. You can simply restore to a snapshot taken before the virus happened.

Or you can recover the file from a time before it was deleted. Many, if not most businesses are required to keep business records for an extended period. This is either for tax purposes or because of various regulations.

Organizations may prefer to use a BaaS solution when they have outgrown their legacy storage backup, instead of doing a costly upgrade, or possible if they are lacking resources for an on-premise backup. Benefits of BaaS include:. On Saturday, May 8, , major media outlets reported that Colonial Pipeline, whose fuel pipeline network supplies gasoline, jet fuel, and other petroleum necessities to over 50 million Americans, had suffered a ransomware attack and shut down its pipeline as a precaution.

The disruption in supply sent gasoline prices rising over the weekend, with financial markets on edge in anticipation of economic impacts in the coming weeks.

Colonial, which is one of the largest pipeline operators in the US, has hired Mandiant, a division of FireEye, to investigate the attack. Their goal is to help Colonial understand the nature of the malware that has affected its operations. According to the company, the attack only affected its business systems, not the pipeline management technology itself. However, they shut down the pipeline as a precaution.

The source of the attack has not been confirmed, but according to government sources, an Eastern European cybercrime gang known as DarkSide is a leading suspect. At this point, it is unclear who is behind DarkSide.

In some cases, such criminal gangs operate either with the consent of nation-state actors or even under their direct instruction. By having a criminal group perpetrate an attack on another country, nation-state actors preserve deniability. The vulnerabilities that were exploited by the attackers are unknown at this time. IT Central Station members would not be surprised by the Colonial attack. Many of them have spent their careers detecting and preventing such events, using anti malware solutions as well as tools for endpoint protection and more.

Hasnae A. As a system integrator, they implemented Umbrella to protect the network of a client in Morocco against ransomware and phishing attacks. Network security solutions are just one of many countermeasures that IT and security professionals are deploying to combat the ransomware threat. Email defense, endpoint protection, and secure browsers can also help mitigate ransomware risks.

Backup and disaster recovery solutions fit into the ransomware defense mix as well. Email, especially phishing attacks, is one of the most potent vectors of attack. For this reason, security managers often try to stop ransomware as it enters the organization through email.

An IT manager at a mid-sized healthcare company, for instance, uses Forcepoint for email filtering. It does a good job of detecting ransomware links in email and then blocking them. Ransomware attackers may deliver their malicious payload through infected websites.

An end user might click on a link and accidentally download ransomware onto their device in the process. To reduce this risk, some security teams deploy secure browsers, such as Comodo, on end user devices. Principal enterprise architect Donald B.

The software helps in getting immediate recovery of lost and deleted data in the absence of backup. Isha is a technical blogger and data recovery expert. She has experience in Windows data recovery. She writes about technical tips and tutorials. Yes, I am agree with the author, a backup can saves our life from any catastrophic data loss situations. I heard somewhere — Backup a day, keeps recovery away. Your email address will not be published. Time limit is exhausted.

Recovers deleted files, photos, videos etc. About The Author isha Isha is a technical blogger and data recovery expert. Earl Terry June 21, Isha Rikhi June 22, Hello Earl, Thanks for sharing the experience.

Dan Carey May 24, Isha Rikhi May 25, Hello Dan, Thanks for sharing the experience. I hope others will backup regularly. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Special Offer. Simply put, a data backup is just a copy of files from your computer or device. And, as illustrated with the numerous threats described above, keeping a backup of your important business files and data is essential for several important reasons.

Virtually all computer and technology experts will tell you that any backup is better than none at all. Nevertheless, not all backup devices and technologies are the same; nor do they all offer the same levels of protection. Consequently, for optimal protection, it is best to safeguard your data using what we here at Acronis call the rule. Put simply, the rule states that you should:. One of the easiest ways to create backups of business data is to simply store copies of important files on hard drives, tape drives or other storage devices connected to your systems or network.

Copying files to hard drives, USB flash drives, external drives, or other devices attached to individual systems or devices connected via a local or wide area network is an effective way of ensuring backups are available locally when you need them. With any good data recovery plan, keeping local copies of backups is essential. However, due to risks associated with physical disasters, ransomware, theft, and other threats, keeping local backups should never be the only facet of your strategy.

In addition to keeping up-to-date local backups of your files and data, you should always store at least one copy offsite as is required with the rule i. These days, it seems that wherever you turn, there is talk or news about businesses migrating to the cloud or running software and systems remotely via the Internet. And, backup solutions are no exception. In short, cloud backups are secure offsite copies of data that are stored on remote servers and accessed via an Internet connection.

Cloud backups are an excellent option for providing additional redundancy and security for businesses that want to ensure their important data is available if and when onsite or physical data disasters strike.

Many businesses use Dropbox, Google Drive, and other online storage websites to store backup copies of important files.

And, while these types of services are okay for storing and sharing a few files, limitations with online storage sites i. A true cloud backup service enables you to create automated backups of complete systems and store as many versions of backups as you need. As we covered above, there are many ways for your business to create backups of important data, and you should use multiple methods to ensure your files are always available when needed.