[BreachExchange] Avoiding a data disaster: could your business recover from human error?

[Audrey McNeil]

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3197849/disaster-
recovery/avoiding-a-data-disaster-could-your-business-
recover-from-human-error.html

“Data.” Ask senior management at any major organization to name their most
critical business asset and they’ll likely respond with that one word.

As such, developing a disaster recovery strategy – both for data backup and
restoration – is a central part of planning for business continuity
management at any organization. It is essential that your company and the
vendors you work with can protect against data loss and ensure data
integrity in the event of catastrophic failure – whether from an external
event or human error.

Think about this: What would you do if one of your trusted database
administrators made a mistake that wiped out all of your databases in one
fell swoop? Could your business recover?

Backing up data at an off-site data center has long-been a best practice,
and that strategy relates more to the disaster recovery (DR) component of
business continuity management (BCM). DR and BCM go hand in hand, but there
is a difference: BCM is about making sure the enterprise can resume
business quickly after a disaster. Disaster recovery (DR) falls within the
continuity plan and specifically addresses protecting IT infrastructure –
including systems and databases – that organizations need to operate.

While replicating data off-site is smart, it doesn’t fully address human
error, which can be an even greater risk for businesses than a major
external catastrophe. The human error factor is why a two-pronged approach
to disaster recovery makes sense. Backing up customer data off-site means
it is protected from a major uncontrollable event like a natural disaster.
But a local strategy is also essential to ensure there are well-trained
people, defined processes and the right technology in place to reduce the
risk of human error.

Think automation and consider the cloud

Automation of backups (making a copy of the data), replication (copying and
then moving data to another location), off-site verification and
restoration processes are the most effective ways to address the risk of
human error.

Storage replication mirrors your most important data sets between your
primary and DR site or service. Most, if not all, mainstream storage
vendors provide this functionality out of the box or for a license fee. The
replication should support scheduling replication events, mirroring data
sets against your recovery point objective (RPO) and archival services that
allow systems administrators to setup policies that match your business
continuity objectives (e.g., six months of offsite monthly archives). And,
for added protection, consider FIPs certified encryption solutions at the
disk or controller level, which protects your most critical and sensitive
data against accidental exposure by encrypting your data at rest.

You can also leverage WAN Acceleration technologies to accelerate your
offsite replication and/or backups by maximizing the efficiency of your
data replication or backup streams and saving you costs in both bandwidth
as well as time to replicate your changes offsite. Used in combination with
storage replication this makes for a very secure and resilient
architectural approach to data protection, and in some cases, can help
lower recurring expenses.

Another choice, in lieu of storage replication availability, is to leverage
your persistent storage solutions (RDBMS or NoSQL) to replicate changes in
real time as most best-of-breed technologies come with data replication and
backup services by default. Spending the time upfront to understand which
solution is most effective from a cost and execution standpoint is
advisable as there are bound to be differences driven by compliance
requirements.

In addition, investing in automation tools and services can greatly improve
your response to an unplanned disaster, but does require a solid foundation
of configuration management standards to successfully deploy and validate
your configuration items (network hardware, storage appliances, server
technology, etc.). A dedicated team of DevOps resources can be most
effective in this area as Infrastructure as Code continues to gain
widespread adoption. Imagine for a moment that instead of troubleshooting
failures, you can simply re-provision to a previously certified
configuration. Not only are you proving your ability to respond in the face
of a disaster, but you may even benefit from automating your infrastructure
builds, where applicable, by re-purposing valuable time and resources for
other important work.

If you have the right automation in place, with an expected input and an
expected output verified through repeatable processes, you mitigate the
risk that an engineer or a database administrator will inadvertently push
the wrong button and create a data disaster.

The traditional approach is to invest in server, network and storage
hardware, and co-location. But you should also consider the major cloud
services – Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform – that
allow you to back up your most important data straight to the cloud. It’s
another way of investing in disaster recovery without necessarily incurring
the cost of buying data centers or hardware.

Companies of all sizes face pressure from investors and customers who want
assurance that sensitive data will be protected correctly no matter what
happens – from credit card numbers to personally identifiable information
(PII). As a cloud-based software provider, I know how important it is that
customers have confidence that their data are protected at all times.

Following are some top questions to ask cloud vendors:

Are they investing in automation? Your vendor should be investing in
automation to support its own DR plan. A vendor’s own fortified technology
foundation and strong security framework can help you meet your own
stringent data requirements.

Are they seeking third-party assessments? Ask about their verification
processes. They should be engaging an independent assessor twice yearly to
verify the efficacy of BCM and DR processes for both U.S. and non-U.S.
operations. Testing them twice a year is important because the software
space is always changing, and these assessments help to ensure that BCM and
DR plans stay fresh.

Are they making assessor reports available to you? Any vendor should make
the independent assessor’s reports available to customers – ask to see
them. Documentation of specific security certifications can provide
additional evidence that their BCM and DR processes are effective.

Are they focused on recovery time? A recovery point objective (RPO) is the
maximum targeted period in which data might be lost due to a major
incident. Ask where your vendor falls in its industry segment. Similarly,
ask about their recovery time objective (RTO) – the targeted duration of
time within which they can restore our service after a disaster. Many
providers guarantee a two- to three-day average restoration time frame.

Just as you are concerned about data loss and integrity for your own
business, you should seek the same from any vendor. Test and refine your
own processes, and make sure your vendors do too.
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