Organisations have done a great job of securing their mission critical data in their data centres. With measures in place such as access control, back up and DR strategies, the data centre is secure, controllable and predictable.
Outside the data centre however, the picture is very different. Users always store data on laptops and desktops, even when there is a policy that says they shouldn’t. The reality is that this “edge data” rarely finds its way on to a central server and in today’s workplace the reality is that corporate data leaves the building with your mobile workers each night.
The adoption of corporate laptops and BYOD only increases the amount of data stored on these endpoint devices, creating more complexity and greater challenges for IT departments mandated to safeguard the business from crippling data loss.
The challenge for IT is how to not only easily secure and manage edge data with the same effectiveness of that held in the data centre, but to do so in a way that keeps end users happy.
In considering how to solve this issue, IT should consider a four-step process to edge data protection:
- Identify basic edge data governance needs.
a. Select a solution that has the flexibility to align to your security and your cost model requirements.
i. On premises, off premises, hybrid – make sure you have choice and the ability to adapt to changing needs.
ii. Understand where your data will be held and by whom.
iii. Identify your needs: DR, Backup, Legal Hold, E-Discovery, User Productivity, Data Migration – the right solution provides more than just back up.
- Enable your staff with self service
a. Reduce IT overhead by allowing your staff to perform functions such as “self restore” which allows staff to recover previous versions of files that may have been corrupted, changed or deleted.
b. Enhance staff productivity by allowing them to access files remotely and securely sync and share the changes they make.
- Solve the performance issue with block level deduplication, which means that data is not backed up more than once (to save space and improve speed).
- Address security with end-to-end encryption.
a. Eliminate security risks by selecting a solution that encrypts data on each device, again during transit, again during backup, again on the server and yet again during restores.
b. Select a security model where YOU own the encryption keys. It’s your data so make sure you own the security.