In this short article, we will explain a foundational backup rule that, as it seems, even the backup cloud providers tend to forget. I am referring to the recent StorageCraft Cloud Backup data Loss of their Clients, more information you can read here. I am sure that if you read this article in the future, there will be other similar cases that this happened again. We will not focus on the practicality and cost of the methodology but the importance and benefits.
What is the 3-2-1 rule? What are the benefits for my company?
The 3-2-1 backup rule is a reliable methodology that ensures your data are safe in all scenarios. It is recognized as best practice by government authorities, security professionals, and Backup Vendors. Every company should implement this to protect their data from potential data loss and business disruption. The methodology is based on the principle of keeping three copies of your backup data with at least one location offsite. So two local backups on different media and a remote destination, for example, cloud storage.
In my opinion, the offsite destination should be offline after the backup is complete. This ensures no compromise will reach it in case of a severe breach or human error incident that could delete metadata or backup data during replication.
How to apply the 3-2-1 rule on my backup plans?
It depends on your backup’s software. With some less sophisticated backup solutions, you can create different schedules that will backup data to various destinations, including a destination that will go offsite. Modern backup software like Acronis, Veeam, and others have settings that you can apply on the same scheduled job to copy data to multiple destinations at once.
Here, you will find what two leaders on the backup software recommend Acronis link and what Veeam recommends link.
How did the StorageCraft Cloud Backup data Loss incident happen?
Even we cannot be sure about the actual events. Based on what is leaking from various sources (mainly from MSPs that were affected that were communicated with StorageCraft), their backup procedures didn’t consider the 3-2-1 rule we saw above. Still, they were only dependent on the concept of “Cloud,” with an array of servers replicating data, a significant architecture flaw from every perspective.
They incident occurred when they decommissioned Servers from an array containing critical metadata during scheduled maintenance prematurely. As a result, some metadata of the backups was compromised, and StorageCraft Engineers disconnected necessary connections between the storage environment and their Cloud Services. Think Backup Metadata is like a database or a map with records stored with all the information about the relationship between backup jobs and types of backups but not containing any actual files.
Their engineers tried to restore those connections, but they concluded it was impossible, so they stopped attempting it. Meaning that the data were permanently lost, leaving clients without any Cloud Backups, so no Cloud Restores.
If the above sounds confusing, very technical, or just time consuming for you current capacity, we are here to help Contact us by Clicking Here. We are helping businesses to stabilizing and optimizing their environments. We also offer monitoring as a service if you just want us to keep an eye and alert you if something has indications of the will stop working soon. Here is an article related to monitoring
 | About Alexios Pappas – Alexios Pappas has worked internally in IT Departments in multi-role technical and management positions for many years. In parallel, Alexios led IT multinational projects across several countries globally as an IT Freelancer. He repeatedly got Top Rated Plus distinction and also 100% satisfaction rate for over one and a half-decade, resulting from the Client’s feedback. Since 2015 he has been focused on informing and helping Businesses that want to improve and excel in their IT Section. |
