In our modern, complex environments, data has become the lifeblood of many businesses – therefore the importance of backup and disaster recovery solutions cannot be overstated. Such solutions provide a safety net against unforeseen events that can lead to data loss, such as hardware failures, natural disasters, human error and cyberattacks. It is therefore the responsibility of IT professionals to choose a backup solution that meets their unique needs and allows them to centrally manage their backup activities across multiple IT infrastructures, including virtual, physical, cloud and SaaS systems.

Backup solutions are about much more than just protecting data: they are key to ensuring business continuity and helping companies survive in the event of a disaster. This is precisely what World Backup Day at the end of March is designed to remind us of, among other things. This is especially true with the continued rise of cyberattacks and ransomware. One example was globally coordinated attacks at the beginning of this year by a hacker group called “Hive”, which also tried to prey on German companies with extortion software.

Focus on recovery and early warning

IT managers need to ask themselves if they have the built-in tools and reports it takes to provide early warning of suspicious activity and possible compromise of data by ransomware? Does your backup process monitor that backed up data has not been compromised by ransomware and that your systems and data can be restored from your backups? Does your backup solution provide early detection and notification of potential malware before a backup is started? Can it identify and restore affected data and systems in isolation? A good option in combination with DPX workload coverage and instant recovery is backup and storage teams using, for example, DPX GuardMode – a solution from Catalogic Software. This means organizations are well prepared for critical recovery from a cyberattack.

Beyond the risk of ransomware attacks, backup and disaster recovery solutions are critical to ensuring business continuity. They help companies recover quickly and efficiently from data loss, minimize downtime, reduce the risk of lost revenue and customers, and meet regulatory compliance requirements.

Recoveries and usability of data must be a priority for this. The ability to identify and prove lost data after an incident without disruption can make the difference between a company’s success and failure. What is needed is a holistic backup and disaster recovery strategy with consistent support for Immutable Snapshot Support, air-gapped copies of data, granular recovery, and a

well-rehearsed set of disaster recovery plans that can be easily executed in the event of a disaster.

Recovery as a matter of how, not when

World Backup Day reminds us that it’s only a matter of when we need to restore our systems and data from backups. To minimize downtime and the effort required to restore compromised systems and data, IT professionals must be able to identify suspicious activity and potential ransomware data compromises, and have tools in place for rapid recovery. This includes programs to monitor that the systems and data being backed up have not been compromised by ransomware, so that they can also be safely restored from backups.

By integrating pre-backup monitoring into a backup solution, backup teams can receive early and direct indications of a ransomware attack and act proactively to limit damage. Appropriate software can automatically monitor critical systems and files and alert backup and storage teams to suspicious activity on all systems in a timely manner. By locating all compromised files, only the affected or compromised files from a verified good backup can then be surgically replaced, minimizing downtime and reducing the risk of lost revenue and customer confidence.