Louis van der Westhuizen, Solutions Architect: DMS at Datacentrix.
Data is a critical asset to any business, and its protection has become more complex and essential than ever before. And so, as organisations continue to scale their digital transformation initiatives, the need for robust, reliable and resilient backup strategies has never been greater.
Just like a strong marriage, effective backup strategies are long-term commitments that require careful planning, alignment and regular maintenance. Backups must be reliable, secure and readily recoverable to serve as the foundation of business continuity, particularly in light of rising cyber threats, stricter compliance requirements and increased expectations for always-on availability.
Backup best practices for today’s enterprises
Best practices in data protection go far beyond simply creating a copy of your data. They involve a disciplined, multi-layered strategy, which should include these steps:
- Selecting the right technology, including both the software solution and the backup storage architecture.
- Documenting data selections, backup schedules and retention policies to ensure consistency and auditability.
- Following the proven ‘3-2-1-1-0’ rule to strengthen protection:
- Three copies of data (one primary, two backups)
- Two different media types
- One offsite copy
- One air-gapped or immutable/WORM version
- Zero errors in tested recovery
This approach is reinforced by employing immutable storage, end-to-end encryption, anomaly detection and threat scanning. Additionally, a documented disaster recovery (DR) and cyber recovery plan, frequent testing, fire drills and cross-functional collaboration between IT and security teams are essential components.
The interplay between backup, recovery and resiliency
Consumers and employees alike expect organisations of all types and sizes to operate without interruption; contractual obligations such as service-level agreements even demand it. Yet, incidents – both planned and unplanned – can cause downtime and this is when cyber resilience matters.
Backup is the backbone of any DR or cyber resilience plan, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. A solid last-known copy of data is critical, especially in ransomware scenarios. If backups are corrupt or compromised, recovery becomes impossible.
Given the rising expectation for uninterrupted services, and the real consequences of downtime, IT operations (ITOps) and security operations (SecOps) teams must work in unison to ensure resilient systems, with backups playing a central role in this co-operative effort.
To protect backups from being encrypted by ransomware or malicious actors, several key strategies should be followed. These strategies fall into different categories, such as physical security, network separation, access control, software configuration and storage security.
Firstly, organisations must adopt a zero trust architecture. They must then also apply least privilege access, enforce multi-factor and multi-person authentication, and implement network segmentation. Storing backup data in immutable or WORM formats, creating air-gapped vaults and enabling read-only snapshots add essential layers of protection. Furthermore, real-time threat monitoring and anomaly detection help prevent attackers from encrypting or deleting backup datasets before they can be used for recovery.
AI and automation: reshaping backup and recovery
Traditional backup and recovery methods are manual, time-consuming and prone to human errors. They are no longer sufficient to meet the demands of modern enterprises within the data protection space.
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is transforming the way organisations manage backups, DR and cyber resilience within the new era of intelligent data protection.
One of the most significant advancements AI brings to backup management is the ability to detect anomalies and potential threats in real-time. AI algorithms can quickly identify unusual patterns, such as rapid data encryption or unexpected file modifications or deletions, which may indicate ransomware or corruption. This proactive threat detection helps preserve clean backup copies and ensures that data can be restored swiftly and safely.
Through machine learning (ML), AI improves data deduplication and compression, identifying redundant or obsolete files with greater precision. This helps organisations reduce storage requirements, speed up backup processes and lower the costs associated with cloud or on-premises storage. Intelligent data classification also ensures that high-priority data is stored on faster, more resilient media, while archival or infrequently accessed data is offloaded to lower-cost tiers.
Furthermore, AI and automation have streamlined the recovery process by orchestrating and automating complex recovery workflows. Modern systems can prioritise critical systems for restoration, test recovery plans regularly in simulated environments and even initiate automated failover to backup systems or cloud environments. Recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) can be met more reliably, with significantly reduced manual intervention.
AI makes backup data more valuable than ever. This is because, while organisations back up, secure and protect data that lives in files, folders and documents across its clouds and storage arrays, the knowledge locked inside the data is more important than the information itself. However, unlocking this knowledge across the organisation’s enterprise can be time-consuming and expensive. AI delivers faster, simpler and more cost-effective data insights by bringing retrieval augmented generation (RAG) AI and large language models (LLMs) to enterprise data, making it simple and easy to find any information within the backup data set in seconds.
In addition, AI enables more efficient and adaptive backup scheduling by analysing usage patterns, data growth trends and system workloads. Instead of relying on static schedules, AI dynamically adjusts backup times and frequencies to minimise impact on performance and ensure that critical data is protected without redundancy or resource waste. For example, AI can detect when a system experiences lower activity and then automatically initiates backups during those windows, optimising system availability and resource usage.
The growing role of MSPs in modern data protection
As the threat landscape continues to evolve and the volume of data grows exponentially, managing backups has become not only more critical, but also significantly more complex. Organisations must now juggle a range of requirements while ensuring seamless operations in an always-on digital world.
This is why many are turning to trusted managed service providers (MSPs) to help them navigate this complexity. MSPs bring deep expertise, proven frameworks and access to advanced technologies like AI-driven anomaly detection and automation, all within a secure, policy-driven environment. With their help, organisations can be confident that their backups are not only properly managed and protected but are also recovery-ready – no matter what the future holds.
For more information on Datacentrix, please visit www.datacentrix.co.za.
