Five simple steps to protect your business data

With the ever-increasing growth and reliance on digital data only set to expand, it is vital for businesses to understand the complex issue of storage and consider the variety of solutions available to ensure core business and customer data and processes remain safe.

In recognition of Europe’s 10th Data Protection Day, here are five simple steps to data protection that all businesses need to consider, for protection against traditional threats whilst watching out for the more silent forms of data corruption:

1.     Data should be written across multiple drives for RAID protection to guard against the inevitable risk of hardware disk failure.

2.    Data should be automatically protected against the phenomenon of bit rot, where data is corrupted at the very lowest level. This can result in anything from pixel errors in JPEGs to a corrupted database.

3.   Data should be continuously protected during normal business operations, allowing for easy restoration of data from any point in time. Snapshot technology provides point-in-time recovery when a disaster strikes or files are deleted.

4.   Data must be secured adequately in real-time against viruses and malware through up-to-date security solutions; not only at the firewall but also on the storage device itself, in case someone brings malware stored on a USB drive straight into the office.

5.   A second copy of data – and operating system images etc. – should always be stored at a secure offsite location for disaster recovery. The most cost-effective method is a sophisticated and automated replication solution, but a USB drive, traditional tape or backup in the cloud are good solutions too.

Peter Hannah, regional director for UK & Ireland at NETGEAR