5 Ways Immutable Backups Strengthen Your Company's Data Resilience (and Why #1 Matters Most)

Your business lives and dies by its data. That’s probably no surprise, with Statista saying the amount of data created, captured, copied, and consumed globally will reach 120 zettabytes this year. 

Let’s consider what comprises your data. Start with the basics: email. Again according to Statista, we are projected to send 347.3 billion emails in 2023. Hackers employ emails to infiltrate your network using phishing, malicious attachments, or other means. But your business relies on data that may be even more precious than email. Think financial records, private customer data, and partner information.  

So, while an attack can start with an email, once inside your network, the hackers will try to expand the attack wherever possible, encrypting files—including your email servers and critical databases—along the way. That’s where immutable backups make all the difference in the world. Here are five ways they do so.

1. Immutable Backups Are Immune From Attacks 

Immutable backups are copies of your data that are saved in a write-once-read-many-times (WORM) format that can’t be altered, tampered with, or deleted by unauthorized users—even if they gain access to your primary data and backup systems. That’s why we recommend you follow the 3-2-1-1 backup strategy. That last “1” means you should keep one copy of your data in immutable storage where it’s safeguarded from malicious attacks, accidental deletions, and any other type of data loss, making immutability a core component of your data resilience strategy.

2. Insider Threats Are Mitigated

Whether an insider tampers with or deletes any of your data intentionally or accidentally, the results can be the same: expensive. Employees with access to critical data can create a data disaster in a few clicks. Immutable backups give you an added safety net, ensuring that you always have a usable copy of your data that lets you quickly recover and get back to business.

3. Compliance Is Less Complicated

Compliance with government edicts like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States can be vital to your company’s success. Immutable backups are crucial in meeting those requirements by providing an immutable data record. 

4. Disaster Recovery Is Ensured

Arcserve OneXafe offers immutable network-attached storage and continuous data protection by taking a snapshot every 90 seconds. Each snapshot always creates a new object, preserving a view of the file system at the instant the snapshot is taken. Since the underlying objects are immutable, the snapshots inherit that immutability. Your data is preserved and protected, but just as importantly, snapshots let you go back to specific points in time and recover entire file systems in minutes.

5. Data Integrity Is Assured

Immutability gives you a mechanism for verifying your data’s integrity. Because your immutable backups can’t be altered, they can be compared to your original data so you can confirm that no changes have occurred. While immutability is your last line of defense, we’ve simplified ensuring all your backups are recoverable by including Arcserve Assured Recovery with Arcserve Unified Data Protection (UDP). 

Assured Recovery enables automated disaster recovery testing of your business-critical systems, applications, and data. It lets you test the integrity of data on your replica server. Arcserve UDP replicates backup data by saving it as recovery points from one server to another recovery point server. You can also create virtual machines from the backup data that can act as standby machines when the source node fails.

Data Resilience Starts With Immutability

We’ve made the case for including immutable backups as a priority in your disaster recovery strategy. If you aren’t already using immutable backups, talking to an Arcserve technology partner is an excellent place to start. They can help you understand your options, identify the right solution for your business, and implement an effective data resilience strategy. Find an Arcserve technology partner here.