False Security of Having Backups

A backup system only has true value when it guarantees the rapid recovery of information and ensures business continuity.

For many years, most companies asked a simple question about their IT infrastructure: “Do we have backups?” Today, this question in itself is no longer sufficient.

In a context where ransomware attacks, hardware failures, human error and operational disruptions are part of organisations' reality, the existence of an enterprise backup system does not automatically guarantee that a company can quickly resume its operations.

It is the answer to this question that determines an organisation's recovery capability. And it is precisely at this point that many companies discover they have confused the existence of backups with a true business continuity strategy.

A backup can exist and the company can still lose days of work

Imagine your company performs a backup every night. At first glance, this is an excellent practice. However, if an incident occurs at 5 pm, all information produced since the last backup could be lost. This includes invoicing, orders, ERP changes, documents, emails and all the work carried out by employees throughout the day.

In practice, performing daily backups means accepting the possibility of losing up to a whole day's worth of information. Therefore, the most important question is no longer “How often do we take backups?” and becomes “How much work are we really willing to lose?”

Making backups is simple. Recovery is the real challenge.

Another frequent mistake is to assume that, because a backup exists, recovery will be immediate. In reality, restoring systems can take several hours or even several days, depending on the infrastructure, the volume of information and the recovery strategy implemented.

During this period, the company continues to bear costs while seeing its business compromised. Employees are no longer able to work, invoicing may be interrupted, the ERP becomes unavailable and clients or suppliers stop getting a response. In many cases, the financial impact caused by the downtime far exceeds the cost of the incident that caused it.

More than asking “Can we recover the data?”, it is important to know “How long will we be down until we are back to normal operations?”

An untested backup is merely an assumption

Many organisations run backups daily for years, but few regularly verify whether they can successfully restore the information. This is one of the biggest vulnerabilities in data protection strategies.

A file might be corrupted, a server might not recover properly, an application might stop working after restoration or the procedure itself might depend on a member of staff who is no longer with the company. These problems are rarely identified during the backup process; they are usually only discovered when the organisation is already in a crisis situation.

A disaster recovery strategy can only be considered reliable when it is regularly tested and validated under conditions similar to a real incident.

The backup can also be compromised

Cyber attacks have evolved significantly in recent years. Nowadays, many ransomware attacks first seek to locate and eliminate backup systems before encrypting the remaining servers.

When backups remain permanently connected to the infrastructure, use the same credentials or lack adequate protection mechanisms, they can be compromised along with the rest of the systems. When this happens, the company realises too late that, despite having backups, it no longer has an effective way to recover the information.

The objective is not to protect files. It is to protect the business.

There is a fundamental difference between protecting data and protecting business continuity. Whilst backups aim to preserve information, a business continuity strategy seeks to ensure that the company can continue to operate with the least possible impact.

For this, it is important to answer questions such as:

• How long can the company remain closed without compromising its business activity?
• Which systems take priority in the recovery process?
• When was the last restoration test carried out?
• Are the recovery procedures documented and up to date?
• Are the backups protected against attacks?
• Is there a clear plan to recover all the IT infrastructure?

Answering these questions is just as important as implementing the backup system itself, as it is this preparation that determines the capacity to respond when an incident occurs.

Conclusion

The existence of backups continues to be an essential requirement for any organisation. However, a backup only truly fulfils its purpose when it allows the right information to be recovered, within the necessary timeframe and with the least possible impact on the company's business activity.

The maturity of a protection strategy is not measured by the number of backups performed, but by the ability to ensure business continuity in the event of an incident.

If you have never evaluated how long it would take to recover your systems, how much work you could lose or whether your backups have actually been tested, you may be relying on a false sense of security that has not yet been validated.

At Quantinfor, we help companies implement backup and recovery solutions that go far beyond simple data copying, ensuring greater availability, resilience and business continuity.

If you want to assess the robustness of your backup strategy and find out if you are truly prepared to respond to an incident, contact us via info@quantinfor.com.