Ensuring secure backup

VARs and channel professionals can help ensure their customers data is being protected by defining data protection and security strategies along with aligning applicable technologies, techniques and best practices to defend against applicable threat risks. For example, VARs can work with their clients to identify which system, applications and data are essential to keep a business running and aligning different data protection techniques such as remote data replication for critical data, regular backups combing point-in-time copy snapshots and other techniques for important data.

Cutting through the confusion of when to rely on backup to disk or tape, snapshots, off-site replication combined with where to leverage CDP or data deduplication or VTLs can be a daunting task that a VAR can assist their clients with. Consequently, a VAR can help their customers with risk assessment, technology alignment, best practices and looking for ways to help cost justify data protection solutions. One of the first things VARs should do however is make sure that their own environment is adequately protected using solutions, techniques and best practices that they would be selling to a client. Likewise if I'm a client of a VAR, one of the first questions I'm going to ask in addition to other references is how does a VAR protect its own business and data from various threats and risks.