Disasters in cybersecurity strike often and sometimes out of nowhere. Is your enterprise in the best position to prevent a disaster from causing catastrophic damage?
Cybersecurity disaster recovery, luckily, can be made much easier when used in the form of disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). While this service continues to grow across industries, that doesn’t mean the service is invulnerable to cyber threats.
Below, we’ll explore this service, what cyber threats pose risks to it, and what you should look for in a DRaaS provider to best mitigate those risks as well as protect your data and organization during a disaster.
What Are the Threats to Data Security in DRaaS?
Cyberattacks
Malicious actors may attempt to infiltrate DRaaS systems to steal sensitive data, disrupt services, or cause data manipulation or destruction. This includes threats targeting employees with access to DRaaS systems, such as:
- Ransomware and other malware attacks
- Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks
- Social engineering attacks
- Phishing attacks
- Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks
Human Errors
Working with a DRaaS provider means you’re putting your data recovery trust in the hands of a third party. If your provider abides by and implements the latest data security compliance standards, technologies, and best practices, this risk is of less concern.
However, choosing just any DRaaS provider without the mentioned expertise could lead to accidental deletion of data, misconfiguration of security settings, or improper handling of data backups by employees. These can lead to complete data loss or even unauthorized access creating more vulnerabilities and attack vectors than before.
Data Center Failures
Technical failures within data centers, such as power outages, hardware malfunctions, or network failures, can disrupt DRaaS services and compromise data availability.
When choosing a DRaaS provider, ensure they have fortified their data center with advanced security and precautions, such as physical security, backup power, and adequate cooling systems to protect the technology within the data center.
Compliance Violations
Failure to comply with regulatory requirements and industry standards regarding data protection and privacy can result in legal consequences and reputational damage for organizations using DRaaS.
Ensure your DRaaS vendor uses the latest data security best practices and is compliant with several cybersecurity standards, such as those of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Payment Card Industry (PCI), and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), to best protect your data as well as prevent future lawsuits or other legalities.
Third-Party Risks
Risks associated with third-party service providers, including DRaaS vendors or subcontractors, such as inadequate security measures, data breaches, or service interruptions, can impact the security of data stored or processed in DRaaS environments.
What Should Your DRaaS Provider Offer To Eliminate These Threats?
1. Immutable Data Backups and Recovery
Not only should your DRaaS provider be able to backup and replicate your data, they should also be able to make it immutable.
Immutable backups allow the data within them to be read but not modified over an indefinite period. The importance of immutable data cannot be understated; disasters like ransomware attacks are less likely to delete, modify, encrypt, or leak data that is immutable. Even if the threat came from an internal source and has certain data permissions, immutable data still protects against even executive-level permissions.
In the event your backups are not immutable, a DRaaS provider with the right cybersecurity practices and compliance certifications should still be capable of recovering your data while helping eliminate any future vulnerabilities.
Not only does Tec-Refresh hold several data security compliance certifications for various industries, such as healthcare, finance, and banking, but we also provide the following data backup benefits:
- Makes your data immutable
- Allows backed-up data to be searched and restored
- Enables you to compare files to older versions
- Allows you to completely roll back data
- Delivers the ability to restore only the data and files you need
All of this can be seen from a single screen for your convenience.
2. Cutting-Edge Cloud Technologies
Your DRaaS provider must have the latest tools and resources in their data protection strategy to deliver seamless cybersecurity disaster recovery and mitigated downtime.
A DRaSS provider should be able to use virtual servers in a cloud environment and allow you to keep running applications without taking your operations offline. By working with a DRaaS vendor who integrates cutting-edge cloud technologies into their cybersecurity services, you’ll recover your data quicker and prevent the signficant financial and reputational damage of extended downtime.
3. Near-Zero RTOs
Your DRaaS provider needs to be effective and efficient during the disaster recovery process.
Your DRaaS provider should be able to:
- Create a fast backup procedure.
- Compress data to reduce any unnecessary storage during the backup.
- Index metadata for real-time search of individual files and folders for optimal efficiency.
Tec-Refresh offers the above benefits, along with the capability to instantly recover a backup in just minutes. Our team of cybersecurity professionals provides the most reliable solutions for data security management available, ensuring all critical assets are backed up when you need them.
Get Access to Helpful Disaster Recovery Resources
Protecting your data during unforeseen cyber attacks can be a lot to juggle, and DRaaS may be the solution you need to help keep your most sensitive assets safe.
However, choosing the right DRaaS vendor for your exact needs is just the first step in fortifying your cybersecurity posture and making your data recovery seamless. It’s just as important to educate yourself and your team and implement a recovery checklist if an attack occurs.
Tec-Refresh is here to help with your data security needs. Our team of cybersecurity experts has created the essential checklist for recovering from cyber attacks to help enterprises just like yours.
For more help on recovering from cyber attacks, download your free copy of our Ransomware Recovery Checklist now.
