Architecting for Data Security: Page 6 of 8

Tale Of The Tape

Your backup tapes contain a copy of all the data on a given machine or even the network and are a huge vulnerability. Data leaks from a firewall may be more often targeted, but the loss of a backup copy of a customer database is more likely to be catastrophic. And the number of "lost" tapes is huge.

Luckily, there are options to help you protect that data once it leaves your building. First, you should use replication to back up to a remote site--no tapes needed, so no tapes can get lost in the process. Replicated data tends to be more up-to-date than backup data since replication is faster and thus can be done more frequently. Of course, since the information must leave your network while being replicated, you must protect it--encrypt the replication stream or the replicated data itself. Fortunately, standard methodologies exist for such encryption.

Encryption Dilemma Click to enlarge in another window

The biggest problem with replication is archival storage. If the data must be stored for more than a few months, you'll need long-term backup--which again brings us to tapes that can be lost or stolen.