Carol: Hi, I’m here with Tania Lee. She is our proactive team lead at MIS Solutions. and today we want to talk a little bit about backups. so Tania, your team is responsible for all the backup and disaster recovery for our clients. Is that correct? Yes, that’s correct.
Tania: We handle all the BDR.
Carol: so BDR backup and disaster recovery is often linked together, but they’re actually two separate things. Can you tell us what the difference is between backups and disaster recovery?
Tania: Yes, backup and disaster recovery are really related. They’re very similar, but they are separated by processes that basically helps organizations recover data and systems in the event of an emergency disaster, a natural disaster, and that type of thing.
So they’re not the same thing, but similar.
Carol: Okay. Okay. So I guess backups really is you’re backing up the systems, but, if you’re not able to recover from a backup, then what good are the backups, right? Correct.
Tania: So let me go into a little bit more detail on what the backups are basically, the deeper explanation on the backups.
Okay. It’s basically the process that will copy data that you’re able to restore in case of loss, accidental deletion, a file has been moved, backups can be stored on either a physical device or up in the cloud. So it basically just ensures your data in whole is protected.
Carol: Okay.
Tania: Then on the disaster recovery side, that’s when you actually plan.
It’s a planning process where you plan to do a restore of applications, data, IT resources. If, for example, if a hard drive fails, the disaster recovery, you are testing that a whole hard drive can be recovered. And environments, full environments, if there’s a natural disaster and you’ve lost all your servers, Are we able to do a full recovery of your whole environment?
That’s where disaster recovery is key and crucial.
Carol: Okay. So it’s not just files that you’re backing up, but the entire network and the systems, correct? Correct. Okay. And how often should, if I’m a business owner, how often should I be testing my restores?
Tania: definitely at least once a year. you don’t want to, you don’t want backups to be happening.
For two years to realize that one specific day that something crucial has gone missing. It hasn’t been tested and something has, gotten corrupt or affected and you are unable to do the actual restore.
Carol: Okay. And how do we at MIS Solutions know if our backups are good backups? How do we know if they work
Tania: well?
We have a process in place where we do disaster recovery as well as test restores. Also, keeping in mind, when clients do accidentally delete a folder, they will reach out and request a restore, which we do a restore. And there already is a verification data is good. So it’s, you’ve got the client requests due to circumstances, where data’s gone missing that you do a restore, as well as the scheduled test restores and disaster recovery processes we have in place.
Carol: Okay. All right. Great. And how often, should a company be backing up their data? What are some factors that determine that?
Tania: that’s actually a very good question. when it comes to backing up data, what you want to focus on is if you have got data that is critical and you cannot afford to lose and the, sorry, and the data is changing constantly. For example, a file server where you’re storing all your company data, all your files, users are constantly saving documents, making edits. That is a type of file you would want to back up every two hours. So that if there is a disaster and a recovery needs to be done, In essence, your RTO and RPO, you’re only losing two hours’ worth of data.
Okay. Depends, because you have the hour, two hourly incremental backups that are currently running on the servers. So critical servers, where You cannot afford to lose a certain amount period of data. Those are the service you want to focus on having backed up, at least on a two hour.
Carol: So Tania, what are the different types of backups and which one would be best for my business?
Tania: Okay. So the type of backups we have are file based backups. This is, backups that are done through a application, and those are generally used for the two-hour backups so that it doesn’t halt your business and affect production. So file based backups would be the backups you use On items that you want regularly backed up every two hours or every five hours. then you have got the VM backups. Now the VM backups is what will run and takes a full snapshot of the device of your server.
Carol: So how often are those backups done? Okay. The virtual machines.
Tania: Okay, so the virtual machine backups are run nightly and that’s every night, once a day.
Carol: Okay. And so there’s really three different kinds of backups, right? There’s, and you’ll have to fill me in on this. I’m not that well-versed in it, but there’s incremental, full, and I think differential is the other one.
Can you tell us about, yeah, tell, us about the three different kinds of backups.
Tania: Okay. So we’ve got, the full backup and that’s the most comprehensive backup. It basically takes a full snapshot of your device. Then you’ve got the incremental backups, which backs up all the files that have changed since the last backup has occurred.
Then you’ve got, the differential backup, which only backs up copies of files that have changed since your last full backup. Oh, okay. Okay. So the Backup types that MIS as a organization make full use of is the full backup and the incremental backups.
Carol: How do we ensure that our backups are secure from cyber threats like ransomware?
Tania: Our solution that we use for the backups is actually designed to be secure from cyber threats and ransomware. There is a multi-layer approach that the system uses. It verifies methods of prevented threats and ensures that data is recoverable, including encryption, anomaly detections and air gap data copies.
Okay. So what that basically entails, there is a risk analysis tool that our backup solution uses, which basically learns from the data. To, secure sensitive data. In, in, in a way. Then it also has the threat scan where, there’s a threat scan tool that inspects backups and, basically quarantines any spec suspicious data that it might find. And it notifies us. The other part is proactive monitoring. Our solution monitors the client’s environment. And will alert of any unexpected activities basically to the user itself.
Backups are critical and backups are a critical line of defense against ransomware and cyberattacks.
Carol: So it’s not an option for businesses to be backing up their data and systems.
Tania: There, there is no option. You have to back your data up.
Carol: Okay. All right. Tania, thank you so very much. We appreciate your information and insights into backups.
Tania: Thank you so much for your time.
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