Page 38 - Cyber Warnings

2. Deploy Continuous Backups and Test Them Regularly

When is the last time you tested a ‘restore’ of a backup file? When did you most recently
backup employee desktops, laptops, servers and other critical infrastructure? While there are
numerous and very solid backup products in the market, some even open source (free), there is
a smaller list of continuous data protection products that are doing backups in real-time.
Continuous data protection (CDP), also called continuous backup or real-time backup, refers to
backup of computer data by automatically saving a copy of every change made to that data,
essentially capturing every version of the data that the user saves.

Steps involved:

1) Inventory all network attached assets throughout your entire organization – in
particular, the operating systems you are running.

2) Find a CDP product that runs on all the operating systems where you value data –
laptops, desktops, servers, etc. If they have a client for smartphones, that would be
a plus however, at the time of this writing, it’s doubtful. If that’s the case, look for an
additional backup product or consider Google or Apple’s hosted offering such as
Google+ and the iCloud.

3) Test your backup solution and make sure it can restore properly on a few key test
platforms such as windows and linux. If it meets your needs, deploy it corporate-
wide.

38 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – August 2016 Edition
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