Exploring Data Protection Solutions for Your Business
Data protection solutions are a critical component of a strategic data resiliency plan for enterprises of all sizes. The adoption of hybrid architectures and a highly dispersed workforce is especially relevant right now, as much of the world is working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it also creates a multitude of challenges. Any data protection solution must have the ability to protect and restore data from on-prem to the cloud, to the remote endpoint to successfully fulfill the requirements of RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective)
If left unprotected, the loss of data is costly and detrimental. Hardware failure, for example, is the number one cause of data loss and accounts for 45% of unplanned downtime. For businesses, that can cost an average of over $17,000 per minute. That’s a bill no one wants to pay. Understanding an organization’s dependency on data and the tolerance for data loss are critical tenets in driving a data protection plan. The initial step in a data protection plan is creating a Business Impact Analysis (BIA). The BIA is your road map designing a protection scheme tailored to the needs of an organization.
With a robust data protection plan, 96% of businesses can fully recover lost data and resume normal operations without debilitating downtime. But what goes into choosing what works and what doesn’t? We’ve got you covered with these tips for finding the best data protection solutions for you and your business.
Know and understand the data you have
To best protect your data, you need to determine through your BIA process the criticality of the information you have stored. First, you’ll need to gain an understanding of details like:
● Where your data is kept
● How it’s backed up
● What information is most sensitive
● Why it needs to be kept secure
You also need to know your solution’s goals, as they might differ depending on the type of data you have.. Maybe it’s to protect yourself from data breaches, corruption, disaster, or loss due to drive failure. Perhaps you need enhanced data privacy. Is it all of the above? No matter the specific reasons, you need to know and understand your data so you can provide the appropriate level of recoverability, security, and restorability to your data.
Invest in a customized, robust data protection solution
Data protection includes a robust plan for any scenario, including data deletion, disaster, corruption, or ad-hoc recovery requests. At the very least, your data protection solutions should have:
● Data backup: Physical, virtual, cloud, mobile, database, and copy data management
● Disaster recovery: Synchronous and asynchronous, cloud, secondary, and multi-data centers
● Long-term archives and compliance: Big data and analytics, data warehouses, active archives.
A data protection scheme should always include archiving. An active archiving solution reduces the amount of active data that needs daily backup. It’s also an opportunity to keep older data online and accessible for the end-user. If your data has specific compliance guidelines, then an archive with WORM (Write Once Read Many) capabilities will be essential.
But not all data is created equally, which is why customization is key to pinpointing the exact threats your business faces and the best ways to protect it. The velocity needs of the data are generally tied to the criticality of the data.
Ensure compliance with data privacy laws
Data protection goes beyond security solutions — you must also comply with data privacy laws like HIPAA, PCI, SOX, and GDPR. Whether your data protection team is internal or outsourced to a trusted security partner, they must know and understand the legal side of data protection and privacy. That knowledge includes:
● Safeguarding data
● Learning any rules or regulations that apply specifically to your business or organization
● Requiring security training for all employees
You should also always have a litigation readiness plan in place should a breach or exposure of data occur, or if your business is non-compliant.
Find a trusted partner
From IT teams to DPOs to outsourced companies, trust is critical. In addition to knowing the legal side of things, your data protection partner should also have these skills:
● Know how to interpret requirements
● Ability to train staff
● Strong communication
● Ability to work closely with the organization’s highest-level employees and internal IT teams
At the end of the day, trust your gut. Even if you don’t have a strong understanding of data protection, you should feel confident in your partner and their solutions.
Turn to Sanity Solutions for data protection solutions
Sanity Solutions doesn’t believe in being a vendor to businesses; we act as an integral part of your team. Your goals are our goals, and we’ll work with you to find the right data protection solution for you and your unique business. As a full-service provider, we consult, innovate, and streamline solutions. What’s more, our team is trained in the latest products, services, and industry standards to provide a customized solution to protect your data. Learn more about our approach to data protection, then contact us to start building a better, more reliable solution for you and your business.
