How SMBs can protect their data and what the last Facebook downtime showed us
Recent Facebook downtime blocked thousands of small business owners from making money and lost them, clients. It also showed us that even the most technologically advanced companies’ infrastructure is not protected from system interruption.
According to the Facebook update, the issue was caused by configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between their data centers. According to cybersecurity reporter Bryan Krebs, a routine Border Gateway Protocol update caused the outage.
No one is protected from such outages, and they can happen in every company. To protect your infrastructure, let’s discuss the best way SMBs can protect their data.
Do Proactive Backup
The best way to recover from downtime or a ransomware attack is to have a proactive/trustworthy, and fast backup process. By proactive, we mean the following:
For example, we have 20 virtual machines to back up every night, between 00:30 and 6:30 am. The backup process starts at 00:30 with client machine #1 and ends with client machine #20 at 6:30 am.
Every machine up to number four is backed up, but machine number five is offline when comes to doing it. So, the script skips it and continues with the backup. During the backup time slot, machine number five comes online again, but since it wasn’t online when it was its turn in the backup queue, it doesn’t get backed up until the following night, when the script is run again.
The proactive backup includes a proactive security approach that prevents large-scale incidents before they happen. In our case above, machine number five will be identified when it comes back online, and it would get backed up during that night’s window, and not delayed until the next cycle.
Let’s go ahead and see what we can back up and protect, and how:
What to backup
- Folders and files backup – Scanning full-disk backups at a centralized location helps find potential vulnerabilities and malware infections – ensuring users restore a malware-free backup. Additionally, the IT department will be alerted as to whether the files were backed up or not.
- Virtual machines backup – recover systems in seconds by starting any Windows or Linux system (physical or virtual) directly from the backup storage on your existing Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere ESXi host – without moving data.
- Microsoft 365 seat backup – daily backup in the cloud of your crucial systems and data provides business continuity. Typically, Microsoft does not grant extensive backup support. It means you are responsible for data protection from human error (due to malicious activity or innocuous accidents), misconfigured workflows, hackers, and viruses. Their protection is part of a shared responsibility model. Acronis is one of the best solution providers for such an issue.
Protect everything, backup everything
Nearly half (49%) of IT executives said their top security priority is the protection of sensitive data, according to the 2020 IDG Security Priorities Study, which surveyed 522 IT and security executives, published in the CSO.
Security is increasingly a significant contributor to recurring revenue streams as more customers adopt distributed infrastructure, hosted services, and cloud computing support.
That’s why backup and protection should include everything – from regular & sensitive data to business processes and legacy code.
Bad guys crack the system, finding the weakest spot. Often this could be a non-backed-up server, CAD file, or mobile device.
Nowadays, leaving your business unprotected presents a tremendous risk for your brand. When considering backup and protection, include everything – from Active Directory to virtual and physical machines.
Invest in protection policies
Ransomware, viruses, disasters, and all types of security threats don’t just hit the infrastructure. They take advantage of business processes, protection policies, and employees.
That’s why well-described and implemented security/backup policies will decrease the percentage of a successful cyber attack.
As Zach Cooper from ITPro mentioned: “No matter what stage your organization’s backup strategy is at, there is always room to improve.”
Get insights from Acronis
In a special webinar with Acronis, we will reveal how small and medium businesses can protect their data. Register for a free session on Zoom here.
Every participant in the webinar will get 30 days of a free trial.