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Is Your Data Backup Plan COVID-Proof?

Mike Fuhrman
Flexential

No matter what year it is, businesses cannot afford, financially or operationally, to be hit by a data breach or system loss. This is an ongoing concern, but in the age of COVID-19, that risk multiplies several fold due to remote data access. Any downtime as companies work to recover lost information could have major consequences.

At the same time, businesses need to democratize data access to remote employees. We've seen this happening with the growth of cloud investment and migration, especially amidst remote work. But, despite the expansion of data access to accommodate remote workers, organizations are not simultaneously training their employees on how to securely maintain those systems.

To preserve open collaboration while keeping their enterprise environments secure, organizations should take this time to do a mid-year check-up on their data backup preparation. There are three areas where organizations should re-examine their operations to ensure data security, flexibility and accessibility.

Is Automatic Backup in Place Across Legacy and Modern Applications?

Because of the constant flow of data throughout the enterprise, if one system is breached all systems are affected. Therefore, data backup cannot be a siloed effort — it should be implemented uniformly across the entire organization's departments and applications. IT leaders should review how data is currently secured in their organization to make any necessary corrections.

First, organizations should have guidelines in place on where employees need to save and manipulate data — from servers to private cloud applications like Office365's SharePoint and OneDrive. Leadership must make sure that employees understand where critical information should live and are taking the correct steps to keep it there.

Second, we can't forget about historical application use. Even if a system is no longer actively used within the organization, it may still house important files that have not yet been carried over into new environments or that need to adhere to strict retention rules. Any backup software put into place should not only support the new, but also the old. Also, we need to ensure retention periods are properly defined and maintained.

Third, in remote scenarios, server access is often limited, making cloud use that much more essential. Backup software should go beyond desktop-only applications and extend into an organization's cloud environment, where a majority of employees are actively working on a daily basis.

Is Your Network Backbone Scalable, Strong and Secure?

A backup solution should not, and cannot, be a "one size fits all" approach. Every organization has unique needs and business demands. As such, it's important that your backup capabilities evolve as your organization grows.

Scalability is key to effectively managing all, not just some, of your data. This is especially true while online data creation is in hyperdrive as workforces collaborate virtually.

After correctly scaling your backup solutions to meet your needs, it's important to also take the time to check in on your network backbone. Bandwidth constraints are unacceptable, especially with employees offsite. If your backup solution goes down due to connection issues, you've lost the entire purpose of initial implementation.

From there, make sure it is all secure. Data should be consistently encrypted and able to be quickly restored, no matter if an employee is on or off site, if an unexpected disaster strikes. Malicious actors know that data access is widening and are seizing the opportunity to attack. In fact, cyber activity has grown exponentially in the last year, with reportsshowing that 82% of organizations have experienced downtime from an attack. Not to mention, employees are largely unaware of how to thwart potential attacks and often the reason for successful breaches. As an added layer of defense against attackers and human error, make sure your security protocol is up-to-date.

Finally, while all organizations are unique, compliance regulations remain standard across the board. Organizations should examine whether their current backup solution meets the data storage requirements to remain in accordance with current laws.

Are You Managing Backup Internally or Externally?

IT leadership must examine the effectiveness of their solution management. IT departments should ask themselves, "is the team of 'experts' we are outsourcing our back up needs to meeting all of our recovery, security and compliance needs?" or "is this allowing our team to focus on other organizational needs?"

If your organization is managing its own data backup, your IT department should already understand whether it is taking away from their other day-to-day activities. If teams are strapped for time and resources, it may prove helpful to experiment with your options. This could mean bringing on additional internal or external team members to support data management. You might consider outsourcing the management of your backups to focus your department's precious resources on other high-priority tasks.

Remain Prepared Despite Uncertain Times

We are in uncertain times where organizations are in remote hyperdrive. The worst case scenario right now is to lose data or access to it because employees cannot go into offices if systems go down and IT teams are not as readily accessible as they once were.

In conducting a mid-year check-in on your systems now, you will save your organization from an unnecessary burden tomorrow.

Mike Fuhrman is COO for Cloud and Managed Services at Flexential

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Is Your Data Backup Plan COVID-Proof?

Mike Fuhrman
Flexential

No matter what year it is, businesses cannot afford, financially or operationally, to be hit by a data breach or system loss. This is an ongoing concern, but in the age of COVID-19, that risk multiplies several fold due to remote data access. Any downtime as companies work to recover lost information could have major consequences.

At the same time, businesses need to democratize data access to remote employees. We've seen this happening with the growth of cloud investment and migration, especially amidst remote work. But, despite the expansion of data access to accommodate remote workers, organizations are not simultaneously training their employees on how to securely maintain those systems.

To preserve open collaboration while keeping their enterprise environments secure, organizations should take this time to do a mid-year check-up on their data backup preparation. There are three areas where organizations should re-examine their operations to ensure data security, flexibility and accessibility.

Is Automatic Backup in Place Across Legacy and Modern Applications?

Because of the constant flow of data throughout the enterprise, if one system is breached all systems are affected. Therefore, data backup cannot be a siloed effort — it should be implemented uniformly across the entire organization's departments and applications. IT leaders should review how data is currently secured in their organization to make any necessary corrections.

First, organizations should have guidelines in place on where employees need to save and manipulate data — from servers to private cloud applications like Office365's SharePoint and OneDrive. Leadership must make sure that employees understand where critical information should live and are taking the correct steps to keep it there.

Second, we can't forget about historical application use. Even if a system is no longer actively used within the organization, it may still house important files that have not yet been carried over into new environments or that need to adhere to strict retention rules. Any backup software put into place should not only support the new, but also the old. Also, we need to ensure retention periods are properly defined and maintained.

Third, in remote scenarios, server access is often limited, making cloud use that much more essential. Backup software should go beyond desktop-only applications and extend into an organization's cloud environment, where a majority of employees are actively working on a daily basis.

Is Your Network Backbone Scalable, Strong and Secure?

A backup solution should not, and cannot, be a "one size fits all" approach. Every organization has unique needs and business demands. As such, it's important that your backup capabilities evolve as your organization grows.

Scalability is key to effectively managing all, not just some, of your data. This is especially true while online data creation is in hyperdrive as workforces collaborate virtually.

After correctly scaling your backup solutions to meet your needs, it's important to also take the time to check in on your network backbone. Bandwidth constraints are unacceptable, especially with employees offsite. If your backup solution goes down due to connection issues, you've lost the entire purpose of initial implementation.

From there, make sure it is all secure. Data should be consistently encrypted and able to be quickly restored, no matter if an employee is on or off site, if an unexpected disaster strikes. Malicious actors know that data access is widening and are seizing the opportunity to attack. In fact, cyber activity has grown exponentially in the last year, with reportsshowing that 82% of organizations have experienced downtime from an attack. Not to mention, employees are largely unaware of how to thwart potential attacks and often the reason for successful breaches. As an added layer of defense against attackers and human error, make sure your security protocol is up-to-date.

Finally, while all organizations are unique, compliance regulations remain standard across the board. Organizations should examine whether their current backup solution meets the data storage requirements to remain in accordance with current laws.

Are You Managing Backup Internally or Externally?

IT leadership must examine the effectiveness of their solution management. IT departments should ask themselves, "is the team of 'experts' we are outsourcing our back up needs to meeting all of our recovery, security and compliance needs?" or "is this allowing our team to focus on other organizational needs?"

If your organization is managing its own data backup, your IT department should already understand whether it is taking away from their other day-to-day activities. If teams are strapped for time and resources, it may prove helpful to experiment with your options. This could mean bringing on additional internal or external team members to support data management. You might consider outsourcing the management of your backups to focus your department's precious resources on other high-priority tasks.

Remain Prepared Despite Uncertain Times

We are in uncertain times where organizations are in remote hyperdrive. The worst case scenario right now is to lose data or access to it because employees cannot go into offices if systems go down and IT teams are not as readily accessible as they once were.

In conducting a mid-year check-in on your systems now, you will save your organization from an unnecessary burden tomorrow.

Mike Fuhrman is COO for Cloud and Managed Services at Flexential

Hot Topics

The Latest

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...