Expert GuideHealth Check: Cyber resilience needs the "backup fit" of your data protection environment

How fit is your backup? - The Last-Line-of-Defense against Cyber Attacks

Every backup environment is designed and configured for a specific workload and runtime growth. It needs to be capable of performing all pending backups and the internal maintenance tasks within the specified time frames. The SLAs underlying the backup/restore need to be addressed by the backup environment as well as it has to be able to manage the growth of data expected during its runtime without any problems.

Why are backup environments so important? They enable us to restore data after human or technical errors. However, they can also protect against the impact of ransomware attacks.

Because backup systems always form a last-line-of-defense, protection against failures and data loss is very important. Only this way it can be ensured that in the event of a disaster you would be able to restore your environment appropriately from the backup.

Thus, even a well-planned backup infrastructure should be checked during its lifecycle to ensure that the environment and parameterization still fit the current workloads. Requirements often change over time, allowing bottlenecks to creep in unnoticed - these should be identified before issues arise.

Health Check: Inspection for your data backup environment

For this purpose, we conduct a detailed and comprehensive audit of backup environments as part of a health check and investigate factors such as:

Optimizing parameterization and functionalities

Our recommendations are based on best practices and the many years of experience we gathered working on backup environments. We consider new parameterization options and functionalities and examine together with our customers whether the respective backup landscape can be set up in a more efficient way.

We present the results of our analysis graphically in our report, showing at a glance the potential for optimization in the environment.

What is the process for this Health Check?

To provide the data, we create a script that executes the required queries in Spectrum Protect and writes them to a set of files. This script is available - depending on the environment - for Windows and Linux/AIX. It can be run on any machine where the Spectrum Protect Client administrative command line is installed.

Customers can provide us their data via a secure cloud upload. We then analyze the data automatically and prepare it in tables and graphs. In a second step, our specialists analyze the findings and compile them in a report.

Key background information that feeds into the Health Check but cannot be determined from Spectrum Protect is gathered as part of a workshop or using a questionnaire.

Health Check article series

The subsequent blog articles in this series will go into more detail about specific aspects that we examine as part of the Health Check.

Do you have any questions about the Spectrum Protect Health Check? Please do not hesitate to contact us.