IT Security and cyber threats surpass terrorism as top national security concern

IT Security dogProviding small businesses with adequate data protection is like chasing a quickly moving target, and in the past few years, the pace of that chase has only been increasing.  In March of this year, the state of computer safety reached a watershed moment; the intelligence community announced that traditional forms of terrorism were no longer the number one threat to United States security.  Instead, cyber threats have become the top national security concern, and the potential targets of such threats include not just government offices and multinational corporations, but also small businesses as well.

“The volume of attacks is still on a multiplicative growth curve, and spans all forms of enterprise targets, from small law firms in Silicon Valley to Fortune 50 financial institutions, and every branch of government: from city government offices to the DoD [United States Department of Defense],” reports former Citrix Chief Technology Officer Simon Crosby.

The new threat environment means that data recovery services are becoming more important than ever before.  No business wants to see its proprietary data or customer information compromised by those who could put it to nefarious use, but the only scenario that is conceivably worse is probably to lose access to such data altogether.  Some forms of malware attacks can prevent businesses from being able to connect to information sources for extended periods of time, while others may result in the destruction of original data sets.

These outcomes, however, can be prevented if businesses take steps in advance to plan for disaster recovery.  One of the most important is the establishment of secure data backups that are updated frequently or even continuously.  In the event of a malware attack, businesses can quickly switch to using a backup data set so that operational continuity is maintained.

In order to keep such backup data sets from falling victim to the malware attacks that may destroy primary copies, it is important that backups be kept isolated.  One way to keep backups in secure silos is to take advantage of advanced technologies such as virtual servers and cloud computing.

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Learn more about the author Bob Martin