Make Resiliency & Rapid Recovery Your Goal


Userlevel 7
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We all know that Security is in the forefront, things such as SAT DNS Protection, firewalls, VPN Connections all play a massive role in getting the weakest link in the organization as best educated and equipped as humanly possible. 

Data is and always has been the single most important asset that any company possess. 

Accidental deletions, system failures, natural disasters, bad actors, and the list can go on, is always a WHEN it is going to happen, and never an IF it is going to happen.

Data loss, production loss, reputational loss, all form a very close bond and the cost of these can and does have a signific negative impact on any organization.

With the above mindset, resiliency and rapid recovery should become the goal. We are talking about so much more than just a restore point, a single backup copy or making multiple copies. You must architect an optimized and simplified recovery experience that will help you get back up and running quickly, even at scale.

Truly optimizing for the recovery experience requires careful planning, orchestration, recovery options, cross-functional alignment and training, storage deduplication efficiencies, and global visibility and oversight. Having solutions that provide recovery from anywhere to anywhere, and flexibility and choice in the event of an attack or disaster, is critical.

Why? Well, cyberattacks are never one size fits all. Sometimes everything is impacted, and you may need to recover an entire data centre in the cloud and on demand. On the other hand, maybe not all your environment is impacted, just a portion; having solutions in place that allow you to grab individual databases and files to recover back quickly into production can be vital. In the case where entire servers become encrypted, you may need to quickly recover those entire servers elsewhere. Or maybe you just need to recover many virtual machines back to production.

 

As a backup and disaster recovery specialist, I learned quickly that not all tools provide this level of flexibility. It is important to think through all the scenarios and choose the right solution. And remember, multiple disparate backup solutions create a complicated recovery experience, especially when multiple systems are compromised. Simplify and streamline by reducing the number and variety of point products and vendors across your organization, and ensure you always have a well-documented, and well tested 3-2-1-1- backup solution in place, as no matter how many layers we must protect us and our customers, backups is always the last line of defence.


14 replies

Userlevel 7
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100% agree. Backups are something we insist on when signing any new partner. Has saved us many headaches and awkward conversations. Some malware and some accidental, backups are a key way to protect your data.

Userlevel 7
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We won’t take a client on without a reliable backup or the willingness and commitment to overhaul their current solution / add one. Nice read, thanks Martin. 

Userlevel 7
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We won’t take a client on without a reliable backup or the willingness and commitment to overhaul their current solution / add one. Nice read, thanks Martin. 

Same here James. It’s amazing how many clients have no or not sufficient backup solutions.

same with cyber security in general actually. 

Userlevel 7
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Those that come to us without one always seem to have dodged the bullet historically! The naivity / stupidity out there is frightening. 

Userlevel 7
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Those that come to us without one always seem to have dodged the bullet historically! The naivity / stupidity out there is frightening. 

@Jamesharris85  “stupidity out there is frightening.”  almost fell off my chair when I read this, as it reminded me of something my gran always said, if a person is ugly they can go for a facelift, but there is absolutely no tablets for stupidity. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +4

Those that come to us without one always seem to have dodged the bullet historically! The naivity / stupidity out there is frightening. 

@Jamesharris85  “stupidity out there is frightening.”  almost fell off my chair when I read this, as it reminded me of something my gran always said, if a person is ugly they can go for a facelift, but there is absolutely no tablets for stupidity. 

Ha ha!  Very wise lady! Sadly despite cyber security not being a new thing, it seems to have been totally missed by so many businesses

Userlevel 7
Badge +25

I guess for me most disappointing is that this still needs to be said. I would hope by now that we here should all know this. But sadly not the case it seems. Thank you for the reminder. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +4

Those that come to us without one always seem to have dodged the bullet historically! The naivity / stupidity out there is frightening. 

@Jamesharris85  “stupidity out there is frightening.”  almost fell off my chair when I read this, as it reminded me of something my gran always said, if a person is ugly they can go for a facelift, but there is absolutely no tablets for stupidity. 

Your Gran sounds like a legend! Very true!

Userlevel 7
Badge +4

I guess for me most disappointing is that this still needs to be said. I would hope by now that we here should all know this. But sadly not the case it seems. Thank you for the reminder. 

Not us that needs the reminder unfortunately, it's the clients...and even with the best intentions and constant reminders, many of them won't take it seriously until they fall foul to it 😞

Userlevel 7
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Nope, It’s one of those things that people don’t think they need until something happens that makes them realise they should have had it!

Userlevel 7
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@russell.harris  in SA we have had that for many years. When the pandemic came, suddenly people start to see more value in it. The civil unrest in South Africa, where vital infrastructure got burned to the ground, was suppose to have taught us to know better, hope for the best, but plan for the worse case scenario. Yet, when there are data loss, then all the questions come as to why why why etc. Then the exact same scenario you said happens. 

Userlevel 7
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Sounds tough @Martin.1 

Hard to sell people something if it’s not something they can physically see and use. Insurance essentially is what we are offering and all types of insurance are hard to sell. People tend to only buy the ones that laws make them buy

Userlevel 6
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Reliable backup is a must! We encourage all of our clients to have a on premise and cloud based backup at all times. We will not allow a client to sign on to a managed services contract without a solid backup.

Userlevel 7
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Reliable backup is a must! We encourage all of our clients to have a on premise and cloud based backup at all times. We will not allow a client to sign on to a managed services contract without a solid backup.

Agreed. Make it part of the onboarding process. Trying to enforce processes after they’re signed up is a lot harder. 

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