Disasters and cyber-attacks happen, but data loss does not have to be inevitable. Data loss can be avoided or mitigated with a robust backup and disaster recovery solution (BDR). Surviving a catastrophic data loss event depends on choosing the right BDR solution. But you need to understand the critical components in order to successfully evaluate enterprise backup solutions.
What is BDR?
Comprehensive BDR solutions offer recovery options for various data loss scenarios. Determining the correct solution is a deliberate and tactical process that evaluates business data, applications, operations, and risk exposure.
Solutions often include a hybrid of daily backups and more frequent replication of virtual servers to a secondary storage site for rapid recovery. They may also include cloud-to-cloud (C2C) backup, especially for companies that use SaaS applications like Microsoft365. Daily backups provide long-term recovery capabilities. While backup replication allows for the rapid failover of business operations to a disaster recovery (DR) site.
At this point, it’s important to point out the pitfall of relying on a primary cloud provider as a backup source for your data. Several of the larger cloud services note that they are not responsible for maintaining the integrity of data stored on their systems. Instead, it is critical to choose a BDR partner with an appropriate backup and disaster recovery solution. A true BDR solution involves more than just having a second copy of your data. A BDR process ensures that your data is redundant, accessible, and viable.
What Does a Secure BDR Solution Encompass?
Every company has its own set of data recovery requirements. Therefore, recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) will vary. RPOs identify how often data should be backed up or replicated. In contrast, a RTO describes how quickly data can be recovered.
Furthermore, regulatory or compliance standards must be evaluated to see whether they have any consequences for data security. For example, financial services and life science companies are subject to stringent rules regarding the protection of digital assets.
Another necessary element in a data backup and disaster recovery strategy is developing and documenting a BDR plan. A BDR plan includes procedures for recovering data and systems, testing and validation methods, and identifying essential recovery personnel. This plan is crucial to ensure business continuity.
A final must-have component for any BDR plan is testing the recovery process regularly. Any difficulties or failures discovered throughout the testing process can be recorded and analyzed for modifications to the BDR strategy. In addition, test laboratories can be set up within a “sandbox” environment to minimize disruption to the manufacturing environment.
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The ABCs of Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR)
Three Core Principles
Whatever your BDR strategy entails, it should provide the core values of scalability, reliability, and resiliency.
- Scalable BDR solutions expand as your business grows without exceptional effort by your team.
- Whether on-premise or a cloud backup, a reliable solution is fully redundant and accessible from any physical location.
- Resiliency requires protecting data from ransomware attacks and other threats.
Advanced recovery solutions take a multi-pronged approach in managing risk, including a dedicated team of professionals available for client support.
A Trusted BDR Partner
CoreBDR, Coretelligent’s fully managed backup and disaster recovery solution, meets the data protection requirements of the digital enterprise. CoreBDR offers secure, high-performance, cloud-based backup and restoration to deliver operational resiliency to your organization. CoreBDR is available for organizations with on-premise infrastructure and cloud environments and can be customized to fit your business operations. Our expert team has deep experience delivering to clients of all sizes in financial services, life sciences, and other industries.