July 15, 2016

Today’s IT departments are constantly on the lookout for the latest security threats, data breach, software vulnerability, etc. While your backup/disaster recovery solution may not be at the forefront of daily conversations, it can and should be leveraged as a tool against security threats.

The following are three features your backup/DR solution should be doing for you so that security threats become a non-event.

Three ways a BDR solution can improve your security

Harden your servers before going live
Your BDR solution should be more of a tool—not just insurance. Many security breaches happen because the targeted system didn’t follow best practices for OS and application hardening. Testing these configuration changes before going live is something you can push to your BDR solution. Your BDR solution should provide an isolated, secure environment for your testing. If it doesn’t, you are not getting maximum benefit from your investment.

Penetration test against a copy of your production environment Security breach testing is a great skill to hone but instead of doing this against development systems, do it against exact copies of your production environment. Market leading BDR solutions are able to spin up a clone of your entire IT environment at any time. This cloned environment should be used as your penetration testing target. Don’t use dummy servers—use copies of production!

Finally–BDR is here to save the day
Backups/DR are in place to get you out of a jam. Regardless of the type of failure (hardware, software, ransomware), your BDR solution should be able to recover quickly to maintain uptime and assure access to critical information and systems within minutes. Quorum has built our onQ BDR solution with these concepts in mind. We encourage you to get a free copy of our virtual appliance to see for yourself. We offer one server absolutely free, as a way to demonstrate our advanced capabilities.

Watch our latest webinar: Is your Backup secure? 3 Steps to better backups