12 Data Protection technologies and practices to protect your data

12 Data Protection Technologies and Practices to Protect Your Data

When it comes to protecting your data, there are many storage and management options you can choose from. Solutions can help you restrict access, monitor activity, and respond to threats. Here are some of the most commonly used practices and technologies:

1. Data discovery—a first step in data protection, this involves discovering which data sets exist in the organization, which of them are business critical and which contains sensitive data that might be subject to compliance regulations.
2. Data loss prevention (DLP)—a set of strategies and tools that you can use to prevent data from being stolen, lost, or accidentally deleted. Data loss prevention solutions often include several tools to protect against and recover from data loss.
3. Storage with built-in data protection—modern storage equipment provides built-in disk clustering and redundancy. For example, Cloudian’s Hyperstore provides up to 14 nines of durability, low cost enabling storage of large volumes of data, and fast access for minimal RTO/RPO. Learn more in our guide to secure data storage.
4. Backup—creates copies of data and stores them separately, making it possible to restore the data later in case of loss or modification. Backups are a critical strategy for ensuring business continuity when original data is lost, destroyed, or damaged, either accidentally or maliciously. Learn more in our guide to data availability.
5. Snapshots—a snapshot is similar to a backup, but it is a complete image of a protected system, including data and system files. A snapshot can be used to restore an entire system to a specific point in time.
6. Replication—a technique for copying data on an ongoing basis from a protected system to another location. This provides a living, up-to-date copy of the data, allowing not only recovery but also immediate failover to the copy if the primary system goes down.
7. Firewalls—utilities that enable you to monitor and filter network traffic. You can use firewalls to ensure that only authorized users are allowed to access or transfer data.
8. Authentication and authorization—controls that help you verify credentials and assure that user privileges are applied correctly. These measures are typically used as part of an identity and access management (IAM) solution and in combination with role-based access controls (RBAC).
9. Encryption—alters data content according to an algorithm that can only be reversed with the right encryption key. Encryption protects your data from unauthorized access even if data is stolen by making it unreadable. Learn more in guide to data encryption.
10. Endpoint protection—protects gateways to your network, including ports, routers, and connected devices. Endpoint protection software typically enables you to monitor your network perimeter and to filter traffic as needed.
11. Data erasure—limits liability by deleting data that is no longer needed. This can be done after data is processed and analyzed or periodically when data is no longer relevant. Erasing unnecessary data is a requirement of many compliance regulations, such as GDPR. For more information about GDPR, check out our guide: GDPR Data Protection.
12. Disaster recovery—a set of practices and technologies that determine how an organization deals with a disaster, such as a cyber attack, natural disaster, or large-scale equipment failure. The disaster recovery process typically involves setting up a remote disaster recovery site with copies of protected systems, and switching operations to those systems in case of disaster.