The new normal is working from home (WFH). Today there are millions of additional devices, managed and unmanaged, connecting to corporate networks from everywhere. That adds tremendous complexity to IT management, data security, and backup and recovery strategies.
Whether your employees use company-owned or personal devices at home, protecting your data is a challenge. Even with access from virtual private networks (VPNs) protected by next-generation firewalls, no network is entirely secure.
Revisit your Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan
Think of this new era as your opportunity to turn the challenges that come with a WFH workforce into a driver for improving your backup and disaster recovery (BDR) plans and ensuring your overall business continuity.
That means making sure your recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives are up-to-date and can be achieved with your existing backup and recovery technologies. You’ll find a complete list of IT disaster recovery checklist items on our blog.
If a ransomware attack is successful or a hardware failure occurs, the most important thing is recovering your data to ensure business continuity. The best way to make that happen is by implementing the right backup and recovery strategy—one that includes off-site replication.
Update your Backup Solution for the WFH Era
With so much data being generated in so many places, your BDR solution should also execute frequent backups from your employees’ devices—every few minutes at a minimum—to the user’s local external drive, your corporate network, or the Cloud.
That way, your users can quickly recover critical data, should it ever be lost, no matter why and how. And that’s why you need a BDR solution that goes further in the WFH era.
Implement a WFH-Proof Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution
As we discussed in a recent post, one way to ensure business continuity is the replication of your backups following the 3-2-2 Backup Rule.
This backup and recovery strategy adds layers of protection by replicating your backups to remote storage and/or the Cloud, where they are securely encrypted and always available so you can rest assured that your data will be recoverable, no matter what.
All data is not equal, however, and fast recovery is critical if your remote workforce is going to return to productivity following a data disaster quickly.
So instead of trying to manually implement a somewhat antiquated rule, consider a complete file backup and recovery solution. This approach lets you automate complex and comprehensive backup requirements with enterprise-class features and at scale.
For example, it allows you to seamlessly identify the data on any given computer that should be backed up, excluding non-critical files (like your employees’ pet photos, for instance). That saves storage space.
The solution also automates backups, sending them to the Cloud—even files that are in use or locked by the user—ensuring frequently used and edited data is well-protected.
Simplifying remote management—including licensing, installation, configuration, and monitoring—is also critical with the added complexity brought on by the WFH era.
A solution that offers this will empower end-users so they can easily find and download lost files and folders from the Cloud if or when they need to. That saves IT time and headaches.
Protect every endpoint to ensure business continuity
With much of your workforce now working remotely, a flexible, highly scalable solution that lets you quickly deploy service nodes to as many sites as you need is a necessity. That way, you can be confident that your data is protected as new devices come and go on your network.
StorageCraft ShadowXafe protects desktops, physical servers, and virtual machines (VMs) by making it easy to back up, replicate, and restore your data. It also provides you with real-time monitoring, reporting, and visibility from anywhere—more critical features for the WFH era.
The latest version of ShadowXafe allows users the flexibility of managing multiple physical and virtual environments and workloads with the simplicity of OneSystem, the StorageCraft centralised cloud-based management system.
By offering a ‘right fit’ protection platform, the solution gives users the ability to enhance and extend their business continuity solution with greater flexibility and operational efficiency while reducing costs.
The WFH era marks a transition in the way that many of us work.
While this change is fraught with security, productivity, and efficiency risks, it is also an opportunity for companies to demonstrate their ability to adapt to fast-changing market forces and successfully meet the challenges in our future.
The first step is ensuring your data is safe, and recovery is easy. If you haven’t already done so, get started today.
Leo Lynch is the Director of Sales, Asia Pacific at StorageCraft Technology Corp.
