Is It Important to Air gap Your Backups?
Is It Important to Air gap Your Backups? An air gap is basically a security measure which is used in computer networks to ascertain that the network is isolated from any sort of unsecure networks. An air gapped network is not connected to the Internet or any other computers that are connected to the Internet. In fact, for air gap systems, there is some specified amount of space that needs to be present between the air gap systems and outside walls. In addition to that, the wires of an air gapped network are also separated from the wires of other technical equipment.
This sort of security technique is employed for networks where classified information or any sensitive type of information is present; such as military organizations, government and financial systems. Sometimes, a Faraday cage is also used to prevent the escape of any sort of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from the equipment.
This is an electronic age and almost all the enterprises and businesses have electronic data. It is essential for the organizations to keep their data intact and secure. For that, different companies utilize different methods to back up their data regularly and safely in order to prevent any data loss in case of a problem.
Some people use 3rd party services such as Veeam, service accounts and tapes to secure their networks. Some people also use RAID 5 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), which is a configuration which uses disk striping with parity. Disk striping is basically the process of dividing a body of data into smaller blocks and distributing the smaller ‘chunks’ of data to different disks. In this type of configuration, no single disk is a bottleneck since the data and parity are striped across all the disks. Furthermore, this type of configuration enables the users to reconstruct the data in the case of a disk failure.
It depends upon your data type that whether or not you should opt to air gap your backups. If your data is of sensitive nature, then it is certain that you need to employ certain measures:
- Configure a good back up; for that it can be a reliable 3rd party software or service
- You must air gap your data backups, thus isolating the network from the outside world so that a) no one can snoop your data and/or b) insert a Malware or Trojan inside it
- A RAID 5 configuration may also be used, providing an extra layer of protection; should there is a problem with the data
- If the data is extremely sensitive and you have classified information, which you cannot afford to let fall into the wrong hands, you must enclose the backup network inside a Faraday cage
Conclusion:
Your data is a precious and valuable resource – most of the times an irreplaceable one. So, the protection of your data should be your top priority and in order to protect your data, you need to configure regular backups. The backups also need to be protected by means of air gaps or other methods that are mentioned in the article. If your data is of sensitive nature, it is essential to secure it in every possible way and follow the aforementioned tips.
