Cyber Defense eMagazine May 2019

Backups like The Last Resort
The importance of backups within organization landscape.
By Pedro Tavares, Founder of CSIRT.UBI & Cyber Security Blog seguranca-informatica.pt
Today we live in an age where technology is part of everyday life for most people. Have you ever
wondered if all the information on your smartphone and your personal computer was corrupted
or lost? Your photos, contacts, important documents; with no chance of being recovered. Of course, this
would be a very unpleasant situation in your life.
Looking at the day-to-day of an organization, the big picture is nothing different. If this situation would be
complicated for a person, imagine what would happen if an organization lost all data. Sales information,
customer and supplier data, contracts, sensitive files with large years of history, etc. Certainly, any digital
catastrophe would do a great deal of damage to the organization, both reputational and related to the
market position - the organization would probably close the doors.
Data Integrity
Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data and social networks — it was not necessary
to enumerates CRMs, or even to speak about databases. Some of these ‘words’ have leveraged the
amount of information currently available in organizations. Digital data has thus become the new
petroleum, and guarantee its integrity, confidentiality and availability is increasingly important.
Backups like The Last Resort
The main purpose of a backup is the replication, the copying of information for future restoration or
consultation in case of loss, unauthorized alteration or damage to some type of file or digital system, and
even until a natural or digital catastrophe.
The backup should preferably be performed on an external drive, and at different geographic location
points, to prevent a type of damage from affecting different backups (which would be a huge problem).
Different devices for backups can be highlighted:
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