It’s difficult—if not impossible—to manage an effective IT strategy without relying on a complex system of data-driven applications and processes, especially as the advantage technology provides businesses continues to grow.
Yet, what happens when the data your company needs to operate efficiently every day is suddenly lost?
A major data loss caused by a cyber attack, natural disaster, or human error can be crippling in terms of cost, time, and resources spent trying to fix the damage. Some estimates show that when systems unexpectedly go down, it can cost companies an average of $5,600 per minute, over $300,000 per hour that the issue isn’t resolved.
While there are steps you can take to protect your data, eventually, your company may find itself facing a scenario where your data becomes compromised anyway.
Data resilience is an IT strategy that lets you maintain your operations with minimal disruption, even if data is compromised, by backing up your data securely to multiple locations.
Data resilience and data protection are different in that data protection is simply preventative. Data resilience, on the other hand, is reactive, meaning it gives you the ability to keep operations running smoothly no matter what.
1. Why Is Data Resilience Important?
2. Data Resilience Strategy
3. Where to Duplicate Data and How
4. How Vudu Helps You Build a Resilient IT Strategy
More and more, business processes are becoming digital, and all digital assets rely on data. As companies become more tech-savvy, unfortunately, so do cybercriminals.
Common threats businesses may face include ransomware, viruses, spyware, phishing scams, hacked passwords, and other malicious activities that compromise your data.
According to the U.S. Small Business Association, small businesses may be particularly prone to cyber attacks, and a majority say they feel unprepared for these threats versus bigger companies with more resources.
Although small businesses are typically seen as being more prone to cyberattacks, large enterprises also can suffer security flaws that leave them vulnerable. Without having the right data resilience strategy in place, companies of all sizes put themselves at risk.
An IT strategy that employs data resilience successfully is one that evaluates potential points of data breach and employs a plan to reroute to uncompromised sources should a breach occur.
Endpoint management is an effective technique to achieve this goal. Endpoints are devices that communicate with your network, such as computers, smart devices, point of sale systems, servers, and even printers. These endpoints represent potentially vulnerable entry points for threat actors.
Endpoint management is the strategy through which you can evaluate these endpoint devices, authenticate and assign access, update software, and troubleshoot for potential issues.
Most attackers gain access through endpoints. One study shows that up to 70% of successful cybersecurity breaches started with an endpoint device. Yet many companies are unprepared to handle such a threat. Without effective endpoint management, ad hoc fixes may not stop the problem from spreading.
The right endpoint management solution lets your IT team remotely push out updates, define network and VPN configurations, change passwords, and more, all from one hub.
An endpoint management system should allow you to authenticate and monitor all endpoint devices, whether personal or company-owned, assessing both the internal security of the device and the security of the network connection.
A centralized and unified endpoint management system has many benefits. Your team can detect vulnerabilities and potential breaches more quickly, respond to threats immediately, and reduce the overall cost of downtime, lost data, and other bad outcomes.
By constantly validating and authenticating users and endpoint devices within the network, you can reduce the possibility of a data breach.
Should a breach occur, endpoint management tools can sever network access and isolate the compromised endpoint device.
With endpoint management systems, you can also use automation to ensure up-to-date security controls are functioning properly on all connected devices.
Choosing where and how to duplicate your data affects the efficiency of your data resilience plan. Here are a few of the main methods businesses can use to ensure the data you need to maintain your operations stays resilient.
· Traditional backups
Stored backups have traditionally been a standard of data duplication for many businesses. Yet the process of synchronizing backup data may lead to a gap of lost data between the current version and the latest backup, and this method can lead to other potential challenges.
· Snapshots
Just as a photo represents a specific moment in the past, storage snapshots create a reference for data as it exists at a specific point in time. Snapshots provide the ability for you to roll back to earlier copies of that data should an issue occur.
· Mirroring
Data mirroring is a technique similar to data backups, except that data mirroring creates duplicate data in real-time to be stored remotely. Data mirroring can also be used to track changes in the system and identify and resolve issues, all while minimizing downtime by quickly transferring data from a shared network location.
· Flash copies
Flash copies are complete, point-in-time copies of the data array that let you quickly access data on various partitions and enact a more efficient backup and disaster recovery process.
· Hardware replication
Hardware replication happens at the broader disk or operating system level. This is usually done within the storage system controller to replicate disk blocks. You can only use one copy at a time while data is being replicated, which is a disadvantage when you need access to active systems.
· Software replication
Software replication uses journaling to record changes to data between servers. Unlike hardware replication, software replication doesn’t have a rigid application governing what data you choose to replicate and how that process occurs.
Whether you’re facing down potential security threats or undergoing routine maintenance, the best data resilience plans allow you to operate without fear of long, costly downtime or other catastrophic outcomes while also maintaining effectiveness as your business scales with more complex systems and processes.
You need IT specialists who understand how to build a technology strategy that grows with your business.
Vudu’s technology wizards are leadership-minded and business-focused. We strive to connect with your business’s operations, strategies, and goals on every level. Vudu helps transform data into insights, insights into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom to build a more resilient business now and into the future.
At Vudu, we are technology wizards who want to bring IT magic to your business and achieve supernatural results. Want to learn more about the advantages of data resilience? Tell us more about your goals.
