Layered Security Strategy Should Start and End with BDR

When you think about your security strategy, firewalls, endpoint protection, insider threats, external attackers, malware and vulnerabilities all come to mind. It’s rare that your backup and disaster recovery (BDR) comes into the conversation. It’s probably that your organization, like most, thinks of BDR as being a business continuity thing and not a security thing.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

Your security strategy, no doubt, is a defense-in-depth model, where you have multiple solutions, initiatives, processes and policies in place–each one providing another tier of protection around your organization’s most precious data, applications and systems. But, with attack vectors like the ever-growing threat of ransomware–that if given the opportunity will turn the tables and keep you out of your own data–it becomes evident that you also need to know: “Can we recover if all this security stuff fails?”

So, where should you fit BDR into your security strategy?

Because you know the possibility exists that an external threat could get through, there are a few questions that will help identify where your current BDR needs to change while simultaneously fitting into your security strategy:

It makes sense to have BDR as part of the conversation at the beginning of the security strategy discussion (so you are prepared for the worst). And, at the end of the day, should the very threat you’ve spent countless hours building a layered defense against have its way with your network, BDR becomes the last defense in your security strategy. By being able to turn back the clock to before an infection–before data was destroyed, before ransomware took hold–you place your network back into a secure state.

Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.