Data backup is the backbone of cloud security, creating a reliable foundation for data protection and seamless operations. But true data protection goes beyond safe storage. A cloud-smart, holistic approach that prioritizes both recovery and outcomes is essential for a fully secure strategy. Backups are critical to cybersecurity, but for complete protection, even your backups need backup.
Outcomes and restoration: Give your backup a fighting chance
Cyberattacks, human error, and natural disasters can impact your IT infrastructure at any time, causing potentially catastrophic service interruptions. When you consider that the average cost of downtime for large organizations is $9,000 a minute—a figure that can escalate into the millions for enterprises in finance and healthcare sectors—data recovery is critical to your business.i
In today’s landscape of digital threats and increasing risks, a data breach is more than a threat—it’s an inevitability. According to the Commvault Recovery Readiness Report, 83 percent of organizations have experienced a material security breach, while 55 percent are not fully confident that they could recover systems and data following a major incident.ii
A solid data recovery strategy that leverages your backups during a crisis is your best defense against data loss. The 3-2-1-1-0 rule is ideal for data protection: three copies of your data on two different media, one off-site, one immutable, and zero errors through regular verification. This approach ensures you always have a reliable backup to quickly and efficiently restore your business operations.
A cloud security model with a failover solution minimizes both risk and data recovery time. By prioritizing restoration capabilities in your strategic business continuity planning and focusing on the outcomes that best fit your long-term business goals, you ensure that your data is protected, and your business continuity assured.
Disaster recovery testing: It’s not just an annual event
Backups need backup, and that involves regular testing of your disaster recovery plan (DRP) to ensure backup effectiveness, reliable security, efficient recovery, and seamless business continuity. Ransomware attacks are on the rise, remote work poses challenges, and supply chain issues continue to be a threat. Testing DR helps mitigate the impact of these cloud security threats.
How often to test your backups depends on how critical your data is in the current climate of stricter compliance rules, rising cyber threats, and escalating human error due to skills shortages. For global organizations managing sensitive data, monthly or even weekly testing may be required to safeguard your business operations. As your organization evolves, you’ll need to update testing frequency to reflect significant changes in business operations or infrastructure.
ThinkOn provides three tiers of testing options, designed to fit your organization’s needs and help you scale as your business grows:
- Essential: Annual restore test coordinated by ThinkOn.
- Advanced: Infrastructure provided for restore every 6 months.
- Elite: Full recovery validation as often as needed.
Whatever tier of protection you choose, business continuity planning and automation with advanced digital tools such as artificial intelligence take the guesswork out of cybersecurity. Extensive managed testing and certifications make it quick and easy to demonstrate compliance to management, government, and stakeholders.
On the road to cyber-smart planning: Aligning DPaaS solutions with a growth and technology roadmap
Backing up your backups is about leveraging cybersecurity tools to support the main function of a backup—to protect your data and ensure your business continuity plans are effective. Aligning data-protection-as-a-service (DPaaS) solutions with a growth and technology roadmap supports your organizational goals and leverages technological advancements while safeguarding your data.
Experts at CIO affirm the need to align business goals with your cybersecurity needs: “Defining the IT strategy involves aligning it with the business strategy, ensuring that it supports the overall vision, mission, and goals of the organization.”iii
No two organizations are the same, so your best option is a data protection plan that allows you to scale as your business grows. At ThinkOn, our tiered approach to data protection lets you fit your security needs to your business plan and align your goals with your budget.
- Essential: Reliable security and affordable compliance that meets industry standards while staying within budget.
- Enhanced: Efficient cost-effective recovery and regulatory compliance while seamlessly integrating with existing systems.
- Elite: Seamless continuity with top-tier compliance. Simplify multiplatform recovery management, minimize downtime for critical apps, and ensure rapid recovery and data integrity during failover.
Simple, scalable disaster recovery: Protection built for your business
Disaster recovery can be complex, but data protection solutions should be simple. Each tier of ThinkOn’s disaster recovery model offers the right level of protection and digital tools for your size and scope of business.
DRaaP resources like clean room facilities, Infosearch capabilities, homomorphic encryption, immutable or air-gapped data storage are simpler and more cost-effective in a DRaaP model, where you pay only for what you use, as you need it. Keep in mind that your cloud service provider should be transparent about any fees involved—ingress or egress—and vendor lock-in contracts.
ThinkOn Data Protection Services: Comprehensive, cloud-smart protection
ThinkOn Data Protection Services offer reliable security, efficient and speedy recovery, and seamless continuity advantages that scale with your business. Our three-tiered support model takes a holistic view to provide the flexibility, transparency, and data protection in cloud security that you need to thrive.
When it comes to cybersecurity, peace of mind is priceless, but ThinkOn understands that you also need to plan for the inevitable—and stay within your budget. Our multi-layered approach to disaster recovery transforms data protection from a challenge into a strategic advantage by delivering flexible data protection outcomes that support your backup strategy and scale with your business.
For instance, ThinkOn’s Compass™ InfoSearch with homomorphic encryption provides air-gapped cold storage that is fully searchable, so you can take advantage of advanced data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) while protecting the underlying data from present and future threats.
Additional features to consider for your disaster recovery plan:
Compatibility: Peace of mind comes with ease of implementation, so data protection solutions should be user-friendly, easy to implement, and seamlessly integrate with existing infrastructure like Veeam, Zerto, and Commvault. ThinkOn has long-standing partnerships with these industry leaders, facilitating easy and efficient integration with your existing infrastructure.
Recovery time and recovery point objectives: What RTOs and RPOs best serve your business? With ThinkOn, you get to choose!
- Essential: If your level of risk is lower, the Essential tier offers 24 hours plus time to restore with a 24-hour.
- Advanced: If your business requires less downtime, you can opt for Advanced protection with a 1-hour plus time to restore and a 6 to 24-hour RTO.
- Elite: For large enterprises with sensitive data to protect, our Elite tier offers a recovery time of less than 30 minutes and a 5-minute RTO.
Automated compliance: To keep your cloud environment safe and meet legal and moral obligations to safeguard sensitive data, you’ll need to implement digital tools that provide strong encryption, enforce strict access controls, keep systems updated, and include regular security audits.
Real-Time replication: Minimize data loss and ensure business continuity with immediate failover capabilities. ThinkOn’s regular and managed recovery tests validate backup integrity and readiness, so you can breathe easy when audit time rolls around.
A strategic approach to business continuity planning
A cloud-smart disaster recovery plan should examine complex questions like, how important is your data? What is your commitment to compliance and your moral obligation to protect privacy? How much downtime can your business afford? How important is business continuity to the growth and sustainability of your business?
To compose a disaster recovery masterpiece with a robust melody, fully integrated harmony, and complex layers of protection, you need to go beyond a backup mindset and think about total needs for your data with a comprehensive business continuity plan.
With ThinkOn, we help you innovate faster, stay competitive, and achieve resilient data protection that grows and changes at the speed of your business. That’s a full symphony of data resiliency and cybersecurity that lets you to sleep at night—and drives your business to new growth and streamlined operations all day long.