20+ Cybersecurity and backup terms every company should know

What is a virus? What is a backup? How can you protect our IT infrastructure from cyber threats?

These are questions concerning Cybersecurity and backup every company should know the answers to.

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Behind every successful cyberattack, there’s a small leak or group of security breaches, that nobody found critical and paid attention to taking corrective action.
To help companies to be confident in understanding and implementing this area, we prepared a list of 20+ cybersecurity and backup terms every company should know.

Backup – an extra copy of the information, or a process of securing your software infrastructure and data, stored in an additional copy elsewhere, usually on a separate device or the cloud so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The most secure backup procedure includes locating the separate device in a different location than the main software infrastructure and data. The 3-2-1 backup strategy simply declares that you should have 3 copies of your data (your production data and 2 backup copies) on two different media (disk and tape or cloud) with one copy off-site for disaster recovery.

Backup as a Service – (BaaS) is an approach to backing up data that involves purchasing backup and recovery services from an outside provider who offers this as a service. BaaS connects systems to a private, public, or hybrid cloud, managed by the outside provider. BaaS provides 24/7 data management, and updates plus centralized workload management. This way you can manage backups yourself or get assistance from a service provider to follow which backups are completed – from end-point devices to data storage maintenance, rather than having to do these tasks yourself.

Cybersecurity – method of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks. These cyberattacks are usually aimed at obtaining, changing, or destroying sensitive information, extorting money from users, or interrupting normal business processes.

Cyber Attack – is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, or endpoint devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricted areas of the system without authorization, potentially with malicious intent. Depending on the context, cyberattacks can be part of cyberwarfare or cyberterrorism. A cyberattack can be employed by sovereign states, individuals, groups, society, or organizations, and it may originate from an anonymous source.

A computer virus – is a type of malicious code, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs how it works. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are infected. As described by Norton, it operates by inserting or attaching itself to a legitimate program or document that supports macros to execute its code.

Malicious intent – in digital space, is often a planned act of trying to affect or harm people or their reputation or cause them embarrassment in the digital space.

Disaster Recovery – involves a set of policies, tools, and procedures to enable the recovery or continuation of vital technology infrastructure, like (internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices), after events like a natural or human action disaster, or even business disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disaster recovery focuses on supporting critical business functions. It assumes that the primary site is not recoverable (at least for some time) and represents a process of restoring data and services to a secondary survived site, which is opposite to the process of restoring to its original place.

Business continuity – involves keeping all essential aspects of a business functioning despite significant disruptive events like viruses, incidents, or other disruptions.

Patch management – the process of distributing and implementing updates to software, assisting your environment to stay resistant to exploits. These patches are often necessary to apply bug fixes in the software. Usually, there’s a plan of what patches should be installed and when.

Fail-safe patching – Acronis describes it as a process where IT Management and CISOs prevent bad patches from rendering the system unstable. Before applying a patch, it’s automatically possible to create an image backup of the system to ensure you can revert to a working state in case of patch failure.

End-Point Protection – set of actions for devices like laptops, tablets, mobile phones, Internet-of-things devices, and other wireless devices connected to the corporate network, ensuring that such devices follow a definite level of security standards. It includes advanced comprehensive defense like next-generation antivirus, threat detection, investigation, and response, device management, data leak protection, and other considerations to face evolving threats.

Legacy systems – an old method, technology, computer system, or application program, “of, relating to, or being a previous or outdated computer system,” yet still in use. Often referencing a system as “legacy” means that it paved the way for the standards that would follow it. This can also imply that the system is out of date or in need of replacement.

Malware – a piece of code or file created to infect, exploit, steal, or manipulate virtually any behavior an attacker wants.

Anti-malware protection – an essential software program created to protect information systems and individual computers from malicious software or malware. Anti-malware programs scan a computer system to prevent, detect and remove malware.

Server – computer hardware or virtual software that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called “clients”. This architecture explained works as a client-server model. Servers can provide various functionalities, often called “services”, such as sharing data or resources among multiple clients or performing computation for a client. A single server can serve multiple clients, and a single client can use multiple servers. A client process may run on the same device or may connect over a network to a server on a different device. Typical servers are database servers, file servers, mail servers, print servers, web servers, game servers, and application servers.

Workstation – A workstation is a specialized computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Planed primarily to be used by one person at a time, commonly connected to a local area network, and run multi-user operating systems.

Prevention – set of methods and actions, including technology and people. As a result, preventing cybercriminals to take advantage of weaknesses in IT infrastructure or employees behavior.

Detection – a process of using anti-virus software to scan and identify viruses or malware in a computing device, including endpoint devices.

Response – a phase used to illustrate the process of how a company handles a data breach or cyberattack. It includes the way the organization attempts to manage the consequences of the attack or breach. The goal is to adequately manage the incident and limit both the recovery time and costs, including the collateral damages like brand reputation.

Recovery – key steps in bringing back your company to normal functioning, after a cybersecurity hit.

Forensics – relating to or denoting the application of scientific methods and techniques to the investigation of crime.

Learn more on how to strengthen your IT infrastructure, by downloading backup insights that drive change.