Data loss is crippling for any business, especially in the age of big data, where companies rely on digital information to refine their marketing, contact prospects, and process transactions. Reducing the chances of data loss is a vital part of a data management strategy.
The first goal should be to avoid data loss in the first place. There are many reasons that can lead to data loss. Some of them are listed below:
1) Hard drive failures
2) Accidental deletions (user error)
3) Computer viruses and malware infections
4) Theft of laptops
5) Power failures
6) Damage from spilled coffee or water; Etc.
However, if a loss occurs, there are several best practices that you can implement to increase your chances of recovery.
Second, don’t put all your storage eggs in the cloud basket. The cloud is vital for profitable storage, but it has some drawbacks that should not be ignored. Many examples of data loss are due to an employee simply dropping their computer or hard drive, so talk to staff members about best practices. SD cards are much more fragile and should never be used as a form of long-term storage.
Here are some of the main ways you can protect your data from loss and unauthorized access.
Go back early and often
The most important step in protecting your data from loss is backing it up regularly. How often should you go back? That depends, how much data can you afford to lose if your system crashes completely? One week of work? A day of work? An hour of work?
You can use the Windows built-in backup utility (ntbackup.exe) to perform basic backups. You can use wizard mode to simplify the process of creating and restoring backups, or you can configure backup settings manually and you can schedule backup jobs to run automatically.
There are also numerous third-party backup programs that can offer more sophisticated options. Regardless of the program you use, it is important to store a copy of your backup off-site in the event of fire, tornado, or other natural disaster that could destroy your backup tapes or discs along with the original data.
Diversify your backups
You always want more than one backup system. The general rule is 3-2-1. You should have 3 backups of everything that is very important. They must be backed up in at least two different formats, such as in the cloud and on a hard drive. There should always be an off-site backup in case there is damage to your physical office.
Use file-level and share-level security
To keep others out of your data, the first step is to set permissions on data files and folders. If you have data on network shares, you can set share permissions to control which user accounts can and cannot access files over the network. With Windows 2000 / XP, this is done by clicking the Permissions button on the Sharing tab of the file or folder property sheet.
However, these share-level permissions will not apply to someone who is using the local computer on which the data is stored. If you share the computer with someone else, you will have to use file-level permissions (also called NTFS permissions, because they are available only for files / folders stored on NTFS-formatted partitions). File-level permissions are set through the Security tab on the property sheet and are much more granular than share-level permissions.
In both cases, you can set permissions for user accounts or groups, and you can allow or deny various levels of access, from read-only to full control.
Password protected documents
Many productivity applications, such as Microsoft Office applications and Adobe Acrobat, will allow you to set passwords on individual documents. To open the document, you must enter the password. To password protect a document in Microsoft Word 2003, go to Tools | Options and click the Security tab. You can request a password to open the file and / or make changes to it. You can also configure the type of encryption to be used.
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s password protection is relatively easy to crack. There are programs on the market designed to recover Office passwords, such as Advanced Office Password Recovery (AOPR) from Elcomsoft. This type of password protection, like a standard lock (no latch) on a door, will deter potential casual intruders, but a determined intruder can get around quite easily with the right tools.
You can also use compression software such as WinZip or PKZip to compress and encrypt documents.
Use EFS encryption
Windows 2000, XP Pro, and Server 2003 support Encryption File System (EFS). You can use this built-in certificate-based encryption method to protect individual files and folders stored on NTFS-formatted partitions. Encrypting a file or folder is as easy as selecting a check box; just click the Advanced button on the General tab of your property sheet. Note that you cannot use EFS encryption and NTFS compression at the same time.
EFS uses a combination of asymmetric and symmetric encryption, for both security and performance. To encrypt files with EFS, a user must have an EFS certificate, which can be issued by a Windows Certificate Authority or self-signed if there is no CA on the network. EFS files can be opened by the user whose account encrypted them or by a designated recovery agent. With Windows XP / 2003, but not Windows 2000, you can also designate other user accounts that are authorized to access your EFS-encrypted files.
Note that EFS serves to protect data on disk. If you send an EFS file over the network and someone uses a sniffer to capture the data packets, they will be able to read the data in the files.
Use disk encryption
There are many third-party products available that will allow you to encrypt an entire disk. Full disk encryption locks the entire contents of a disk drive / partition and is transparent to the user. Data is automatically encrypted when it is written to the hard drive and is automatically decrypted before being loaded into memory. Some of these programs can create invisible containers within a partition that act like a hidden disk within a disk. Other users only see the data on the “external” disk.
Disk encryption products can be used to encrypt removable USB drives, flash drives, etc. Some allow the creation of a master password along with secondary passwords with lower rights that you can grant to other users. Examples include PGP Whole Disk Encryption and DriveCrypt, among many others.
Make use of a public key infrastructure
A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a system for managing public / private key pairs and digital certificates. Because keys and certificates are issued by a trusted third party (a certificate authority, either an internal one installed on a certificate server on your network, or a public one, such as Verisign), certificate-based security is more robust.
You can protect the data that you want to share with someone else by encrypting it with the intended recipient’s public key, which is available to anyone. The only person who will be able to decrypt it is the owner of the private key that corresponds to that public key.
Hide data with steganography
You can use a steganography program to hide data within other data. For example, you can hide a text message within a .JPG graphics file or MP3 music file, or even within another text file (although the latter is difficult because text files do not contain much redundant data that is can be replaced with the hidden message). Steganography does not encrypt the message, so it is often used in conjunction with encryption software. The data is first encrypted and then hidden inside another file with steganography software.
Some steganographic techniques require the exchange of a secret key and others use public / private key cryptography. A popular example of steganography software is StegoMagic, a free download that will encrypt messages and hide them in .TXT, .WAV, or .BMP files.
Protect data in transit with IP security
Your data can be captured while traveling over the network by a hacker with tracker software (also called network monitoring or protocol analysis software). To protect your data when it is in transit, you can use Internet Protocol security (IPsec), but both the sending and receiving systems must support it. Microsoft’s Windows 2000 and later operating systems have built-in support for IPsec. Applications do not have to be IPsec aware because it operates at a lower level of the network model. Encapsulated Security Payload (ESP) is the protocol that IPsec uses to encrypt data for confidentiality purposes. It can operate in tunnel mode, for door-to-door protection, or in transport mode, for end-to-end protection. To use IPsec on Windows, you must create an IPsec policy and choose the authentication method and IP filters to use. The IPsec configuration is configured through the properties sheet of the TCP / IP protocol, in the Options tab of Advanced TCP / IP configuration.
Secure wireless transmissions
Data you send over a wireless network is even more subject to interception than data sent over an Ethernet network. Hackers don’t need physical access to the network or your devices; Anyone with a wireless capable laptop and a high gain antenna can capture data and / or log onto the network and access the data stored there if the wireless access point is not securely configured.
You should send or store data only on wireless networks that use encryption, preferably Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), which is stronger than Wired Equivalent Protocol (WEP).
Use rights management to stay in control
If you need to send data to other people but are concerned about protecting it after it leaves your own system, you can use Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) to control what recipients can do with it. For example, you can set rights so that the recipient can read the Word document you sent, but cannot change, copy, or save it. You can prevent recipients from forwarding the email messages you send to them, and you can even set documents or messages to expire at a certain date / time so that the recipient can no longer access them after that time.
To use RMS, you need a Windows Server 2003 server configured as an RMS server. Users need an Internet Explorer plug-in or client software to access RMS-protected documents. Users who are assigned rights must also download a certificate from the RMS server.