How important is your company data?

Let’s rephrase that: how important is your company?

We used to talk about securing data – the many files that are fed into systems to bring results. If this spreadsheet or that database went missing, it was a crisis. But today much more is at stake. Those applications that digest the data have become as critical, not to mention the configurations, policies and integrations that support them. Every company’s digital environment is unique. When a breach occurs, the real indicator of resilience is how fast that environment can be restored.

The popular example of such a crisis is cybercrime – and rightly so. Cyberattacks represent an evolving and growing threat. But the risk pool is bigger than that: natural disasters, critical equipment failure, social-political unrest… Even losing power to your building because someone outside accidentally severed a cable: there are many things that can brutally disrupt a company’s digital environment and consequently the company itself.

Why do most recovery systems fail? First, they are often reactive, with no forward planning to promote preemptive action. They wait for things to go wrong. Second, they either do too little or too much, due to poor design that didn’t consider workflow. For example, many IT departments put in overtime because they can’t do live backups during work hours, or they do and disrupt the business operations. Third, disaster recovery systems can be as exposed during an attack as any other part of the company ecosystem. Lastly, most disaster recovery systems do not respond fast enough to bring a company back on track.

Dell studied these challenges and developed an approach that covers all of the bases. The Isolated Recovery Solution (IRS) starts by identifying the applications, data, configurations and such that should be safeguarded. It’s an exercise that helps customer companies evaluate their current risks and priorities as a business.

IRS is then introduced as an ‘air gap’ system, which means it is securely isolated from the company and other networks. A dedicated network connection, managed by IRS’ policies and automation, connects to the business environment to do backups and recoveries. This single-point of entry makes it very hard for the maliciously-minded (such as ransomware or compromised staff) to access and disrupt the recovery vault.

The data is managed and validated using applications such as RecoverPoint and Vplex, from Dell’s Federation of companies. The systems themselves are built using storage arrays from VMAX, XtremeIO and more. These ensure data backups and recoveries are lightning fast and eliminate downtime.

Imagine having a vault of money, one that continually records your financial status. It always knows how much you are supposed to have. When someone steals your wallet, the vault quickly puts the money back in your pocket – sometimes so fast, you hardly realised you were robbed! Best of all, the thieves couldn’t get anywhere near the vault.

As companies grow their digital presence, they are facing unpredictable amounts of risk. Tackling these in isolation is pointless and expensive. A firm strategy, backed by good practices, as well as industry-leading software and hardware solutions, is the best way forward.

This is what IRS does for disaster recovery. By utilising its framework, applications and infrastructure, the Isolated Recovery Solution can safely stand aside from any attack on your systems, rebuff attempts to access it, and smoothly bring back all your digital assets where and when you need them.

How important is your company? Important enough to not use inferior disaster recovery.

Read more about Isolated Backups on Dell Data Domain HERE