4 Tips to Remember about Protecting Your Physical Backup Media

As hackers get smarter about stealing digital data, offline backup makes even more sense. Still, you have to take the right precautionary measures when storing data on tapes, hard drives and other forms of media. Here’s what you should know about protecting your backup media:

1. Use More Than One Backup Tape

When it comes to data protection, you don’t want all your eggs in one basket. A solid backup strategy has multiple layers. Having more than one tape eliminates the risk of storing your data in one place. Use multiple tapes for daily, weekly, and monthly backups and routinely rotate them. That way, you can restore data from any point in time.

2. Store Physical Backup Media Offsite

Like data stored in the cloud, offline data stored on physical media is susceptible to unauthorized access. Offsite media storage helps significantly reduce the possibility of theft and physical damage to your media assets from fires, floods and natural disasters.

Your tapes are barcoded for continuous tracking and, based on your tape rotation schedule, background-screened drivers pick them up from your office for transport to a media storage facility. There, state-of-the-art entry controls, 360-degree monitored surveillance cameras, and an internal secure storage cage protect your media from unauthorized access and unexpected catastrophes.

3. It’s Not Only about Preventing Unauthorized Access

It may seem harmless, but leaving your tapes in a hot car on a summer afternoon is a bad decision; excessive heat, dust and mold permanently damages backup media. Even slight changes in temperature and humidity degrade tapes and hard drives. Store your media in a climate-controlled facility where temperature is strictly monitored both within the media vault and during transport.

4. Erased Media Can Still Be Exploited

Even if you delete files from your media, you haven’t removed all traces of sensitive data. With the right tools, criminals can access deleted data, even on reformatted hard drives and tapes. The only way to be absolutely sure your data isn’t compromised is by using a hard drive, media and tape destruction service.

For a solid data loss prevention and recovery plan, remember these media protection tips.

CI Information Management serves Tri Cities, the Yakima Valley, Walla Walla, Hermiston, OR, Moses Lake, Wenatchee, and nearly everywhere in between. For more information about our shredding and destruction services, please call us at 509-586-6090 or complete our contact us form.