How to Mind the Gap between Data Risks and Recovery

Your data is at risk. Of course, you already knew that. Unfortunately, those risks are many. Take the Colonial Pipeline hack, for example. It was the result of the simple act of a compromised password. Or the JBS meat company attack perpetrated by the Russian cybercriminal group REvil that resulted in an $11 million ransomware payment. While Colonial got some of its money back, the impacts to both companies in terms of costs and reputation were substantial.

Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to prevent all cyberattacks. Even with the best hardware and software defenses, all it takes is human error—one click on a malicious ransomware link—and suddenly, your data is out of your control.

Recovery Is Your Best Defense

While it’s critical that you put strong cyber defenses in place wherever possible, as noted, it will never be enough. There will always be a gap between plugging up risks and reality, where hardware, software, natural disasters, and, yes, cybercriminals can muck things up in the blink of an eye. Mitigating those risks starts with a solid IT disaster recovery plan. You'll find a checklist of planning areas in this post.

Disaster Recovery Starts with Backups

Backing up your data should be a core element of your disaster recovery plan. But not every business is the same. Small companies don't need the same backup strategies as global giants. But their strategies do share a common foundation. That foundation is built on regular backups that, in general, adhere to StorageCraft’s take on the traditional 3-2-1 backup rule. In a sentence, that rule says to keep a minimum of three copies of your data: one on your primary storage, at least one backup copy kept in a separate location or at least off-network, and a third copy replicated to secure offsite storage, often the cloud.

So put a disaster recovery plan in place if you don’t already have one. Get your backup regimen set up. And make sure you have all the pieces in place so you can count on recovering your data if, or when, the time comes.

Total Business Continuity for Smaller Businesses

One way for smaller businesses with simpler infrastructures to ensure disaster recovery is with StorageCraft OneXafe Solo. OneXafe Solo is a compact, plug-and-play data protection appliance that streams your data directly to StorageCraft Cloud Services. It is effortless to deploy and manage, using StorageCraft OneSystem for cloud-based management from anywhere, anytime, using any web browser. Deploying OneXafe Solo takes a few simple steps—plug it in, connect to the internet, and start protecting your data in minutes.

Perfect for protecting remote and branch offices with limited infrastructures, you can even deploy OneXafe Solo in virtual environments with little to no local storage. And with its set-and-forget capability, you’ll be able to efficiently manage the entire data protection lifecycle without dedicated IT staff or capital.

Disaster Recovery as a Service: Total Business Continuity Plus Faster Recovery

Local backups are usually enough to recover IT systems from server failure and other common problems. But a sitewide disaster is another thing entirely, likely destroying those backups and resulting in costly downtime. That’s where cloud-based disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) comes in. StorageCraft Cloud Services is a DRaaS solution that ensures complete and reliable business continuity.

Because it's architected from the ground up to streamline data backup and recovery management, StorageCraft Cloud Services helps you get your critical systems back up and running quickly and easily. You can access your data anywhere, anytime, and you even have the patented ability to pre-stage sitewide failover processes so you can test or execute a failover with a single button click.

Cloud Services give you everything from file and folder recovery and machine virtualization to instant failover of an entire site and network. And with the recent announcement of StorageCraft’s partnership with Google Cloud Platform, you now get Google’s global scale, speed, and elasticity, too.

Bridge the Gap

Look to StorageCraft to help you bridge the gap between risk and recovery with data protection, backup, and disaster recovery solutions that fit every business. Have questions? Talk to a StorageCraft engineer today.