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Backup and recovery

Data protection and disaster recovery.

Decision guides

How to choose · Backup and recovery

How to choose a business backup solution

Choose backup by what you must restore and how fast, then test it. Look for protection of every data source including cloud applications, immutable or offline copies that attackers cannot erase, separate credentials from your main environment, encryption, and restore testing you can actually perform. A backup that has never been restored is an assumption, not a control.

Comparison · Backup and recovery

Backup vs replication vs file sync vs snapshots

Backup keeps independent, versioned copies you can roll back to. Replication mirrors data to another site for fast failover but copies mistakes and corruption. File sync keeps files consistent across devices and also propagates deletions. Snapshots capture a point in time on the same storage and are fast but share its fate. Strong protection combines mechanisms rather than treating them as interchangeable.

Requirements · Backup and recovery

Setting recovery point and recovery time requirements

Recovery point objective is how much recent data you can afford to lose, and recovery time objective is how long a system can be unavailable. Set them per system by asking the business what an outage costs in operations, obligations and trust, then choose backup and recovery methods that meet them. Tighter objectives demand more cost and operational effort, so rank systems rather than demanding the same target for all.

Problems & fixes · Backup and recovery

Why backups fail when you need them and how to make them ransomware-resilient

Backups fail in predictable ways: attackers delete or encrypt them using stolen administrator access, jobs fail silently, restores are slow or incomplete, and keys or documentation are missing. Resilience comes from isolated or immutable copies, separate credentials, monitored jobs, regular restore tests and a rehearsed rebuild order that includes identity services.

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