If your business lost access to all its data tomorrow, what would happen? For many businesses, the answer is uncertain. Whether it’s the steps to recovery, the roles among a team, or who exactly is impacted, most businesses struggle to navigate a disaster like a cyberattack. Having a strategic backup and disaster recovery (BDR) plan is key to prevent disruptions to operations, finances, and reputation when a cyberattack strikes. It’s one of the strongest strategies you can employ to secure your business’s future. Not only that, but your backup and recovery strategy must be evaluated, tested, and improved again and again to ensure it stands strong against growing risks.
Evaluating backup and recovery plans is often overlooked within most businesses. Even if a strategy is in place, business leaders assume their plans will hold true against all threats. What they fail to consider are the changes in technology that cybercriminals leverage to carry out malicious, sophisticated attacks. Cybercriminals still rely on tactics like social engineering and phishing, because they work. And when businesses rely on outdated strategies or have no plan at all, they’re easy targets. Without a modern, tested recovery plan built on a strong security framework like Zero Trust, your business is left exposed to today’s growing threats.
In this blog, we’ll guide you through the essentials of a backup and recovery plan, review actionable steps you can take to evaluate your plan, and help you understand why proactive frameworks like Zero Trust are important for faster and more secure recoveries.
Backup and Disaster Recovery Plans: The Full Scope
What Is BDR?
In the event of a threat actor attempting to access important business information, a backup and disaster recovery plan helps keep that information accessible and secure. Backup refers to creating and storing copies of essential data and systems in a secure location, typically in a secure off-site location or through cloud storage. This enables organizations to get up and running quickly in the event of data loss or system failure. On the other hand, disaster recovery is the process of planning for and responding to unexpected events, including identifying potential risks, developing a recovery plan, and putting procedures in place to minimize the impact of a disaster on the organization.
Data backup and recovery plans are two essential components that businesses must leverage to recover quickly from cyberattacks, natural disasters, or system failures.
Building Resiliency
Most businesses won’t survive a full-blown cyberattack without a predetermined strategy in place. Even with a clear strategy, you must continue to assess and pivot as technology and cyberattack trends change. Failing to do so can lead to greater financial losses, irreversible data loss, harsh legal penalties, diminished customer trust, or data recovery that takes weeks.
Evaluating your backup strategy and disaster recovery plan is essential to identify any gaps in your security and develop more effective strategies to build stronger resiliency. Proactive evaluation can also help businesses comply with industry regulations and ensure business continuity after an attack.
Threats to Your Business
To evaluate the effectiveness of your backup and disaster recovery plan, you need to understand the types of cyber threats your business is up against. That way, you’ll not only identify where the gaps are, but you’ll be able to implement stronger, specific protocols for different types of attacks. Here are the most common threats businesses face:
- Ransomware: Refers to malicious software that encrypts important data, where the threat actor demands ransom for its release.
- Phishing: Threat actors deceive employees through realistic and targeted emails or text messages, often asking them to share information like passwords and financial accounts.
- Social engineering: Using manipulation tactics, threat actors deceive individuals into forfeiting confidential information to access systems or steal data.
- Insider threats: Corrupt employees or third-party contractors can use their access to compromise information, steal data, or exploit the network.
- Natural disasters: Though not a cyber threat, floods and earthquakes pose a serious threat to physical IT infrastructure.
How to Evaluate Your Backup and Recovery Plan
A backup and disaster recovery plan that has not been tested or updated in a while may contain outdated information or procedures that may not work as intended. Here are simple steps you can take to evaluate your current BDR plan:
Step 1: Review Backups
Take a look at your data backup records to identify any discrepancies. Ideally, backups should be performed regularly and include all critical data.
Step 2: Test Your Recovery Plan
Schedule disaster recovery drills the same way schools perform fire drills. Doing so allows your employees to become familiar with their specific roles in the event of a cyberattack and tests the speed and accuracy of your current plan. If data is not recovered properly, you know there are improvements to be made.
Step 3: Assess Infrastructure
Look into how your current hardware and software operate. Are they designed to recover your systems quickly after a cyberattack or do they lack the speed and efficiency to keep up with everyday needs? If so, it’s time to consider upgrading your technology.
Step 4: Maintain Contacts
When disaster strikes, you must communicate with all stakeholders involved. Ensure your contact lists are updated on a regular basis to avoid unnecessary chaos when an attack happens.
Step 5: Train Employees
Employees are a crucial component of your backup and recovery plan, both before and after a threat occurs. Regular training should be provided to help employees recognize potential threats and teach them how to respond to an incident quickly, efficiently, and with confidence.
Step 6: Review and Update
Technology changes fast and it’s important to incorporate new systems on a regular basis. Also, consider emerging threats in your industry. As technology becomes more strategic, cybercriminals leverage these channels to carry out attacks quickly and effectively. By reviewing your backup and recovery plan regularly, you are not only strengthening your technology but also protecting your business from innovative threat actors.
Evaluating your backup and recovery plan is a critical component of any business’s cybersecurity strategy. From discovering weaknesses in your current strategy and aligning with industry regulations, to improving response times in the face of a breach, evaluation is key to keep up with the industry and business needs.
Zero Trust in BDR
A growing framework in cybersecurity is the idea of Zero Trust, which assumes no user inside or outside of the network is automatically trusted. Every access request must be authorized and validated at each entry.
Unlike the traditional approaches that rely on a secure network perimeter, Zero Trust is established on the belief that breaches can and will happen. The focus then is to minimize the impact of a breach by managing access to business resources through identity verification and user behavior.
In a backup and recovery plan, the Zero Trust framework can help businesses recover faster and more effectively. First, requiring validation of your network prevents threats like ransomware from accessing your backups and encrypting them for ransom. Internal threats to business data are also minimized by limiting what internal users can access. This protects your business from any negligent or malicious employees. Finally, Zero Trust keeps validation logs and behavioral alerts, ensuring IT teams can easily identify the source of a breach when it occurs. Doing so helps shut down the breach before it inflicts major financial or operational damage.
When evaluating your backup and recovery plan, consider how Zero Trust principles play a role in protecting your business from the inside out. If you have not yet adopted this framework, now is the best time to consider strengthening your strategy and positioning your business to bounce back from a breach quickly and securely.
Final Thoughts
Final ThoughtsWhether your business will get hit by a cyberattack is not the question – it’s when your business will be targeted. And when an attack does strike, are your defenses ready? Ensuring your business is resilient in the face of a cyberattack is crucial for long-term growth and success, and evaluating your backup and recovery plan is the first step. Regularly reviewing your BDR plan helps your team prepare, respond quickly, and ensure data can be recovered without error. With the integration of the Zero Trust security framework, you’re adding another layer of defense that controls access, monitors behavior, and prevents breaches from compromising backed-up data. In the end, you’re left with a faster recovery strategy that minimizes disruptions and provides greater peace of mind.
If you’re unsure of how to create a BDR plan or need a fresh set of eyes on your current plan, contact Atlantic today. Our team of experts will help you evaluate your backup and disaster recovery readiness and develop a plan that ensures your organization is prepared for any potential disasters or outages.
About Atlantic, Tomorrow’s Office
Atlantic is an award-winning office technology and IT solutions company providing Imaging Products, IT Support, Document Management, Cybersecurity and Managed Services to small and large companies in the New York City metropolitan area, and the Greater Philadelphia and Delaware Valley.For the latest industry trends and technology insights visit ATO’s main Blog page.
