Closing the 'mobile' gap in your DR strategy

Fred Mitchell

However, as technology has evolved, vulnerabilities have opened up in many organisations' DR strategies and infrastructure, particularly with regard to mobility. Closing this gap by integrating mobility as part of a comprehensive DR strategy is essential in ensuring that business continuity is not compromised as a result of lost data.

Data is the lifeblood of the vast majority of organisations today and, as such, the loss of data even for a short period of time can have negative repercussions for the business. Without the ability to recover from data loss quickly, many organisations will be unable to continue operations.

DR ensures that vital data and systems supporting business critical functions are available for restoration or recovery in the event of a disaster such as flood or fire, or any other data-loss event such as theft, system failure, hard drive crashes, electrical surges and more. DR is, thus, an essential component of any comprehensive business continuity plan. However, changes in technology have created gaps in traditional DR strategies and infrastructure, specifically with regard to the increased adoption of mobility and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).

Over the past few years, it has become increasingly common for employees to access and make use of a variety of mobile devices during the course of their working day, most commonly smartphones and tablets in addition to notebook computers. Business-related and potentially critical data is, therefore, often stored on multiple and highly portable devices that are prone to loss and/or theft. These devices need to be included as part of DR, both in terms of strategy and the software and solutions to support them, in order to address an area of vulnerability that has become increasingly common.

Comprehensive DR plan

A comprehensive DR plan needs to include all business-critical data no matter where it is stored or generated. The ability to back up and recover data from mobile devices is, therefore, essential. Adding to the complexity of this challenge, more and more data is being moved to virtual storage, and software is increasingly virtualised, while applications (apps) have become increasingly common as business tools. In order to cater to this changing dynamic, DR sites must work in conjunction with mobile management solutions to ensure that all data is sufficiently backed up and available for recovery.

Mobile management should provide heterogeneous device support and comprehensive visibility and control over all different Operating Systems (OS), along with the ability to manage security and policy controls including back-up, passwords, remote wipe, application restrictions and more. Email, enterprise applications and corporate content need to be incorporated as part of mobile management in order to meet DR objectives. In addition, the separation of corporate and personal data is essential to ensure that only business-related data is included as part of a DR plan, and to limit both data loss and privacy concerns.

DR and back-up are an essential component of data security in a digital world. However, as technology changes, traditional solutions need to adapt in order to meet evolving demands. Mobility is here to stay, and its use will only continue to grow in future. As a result, organisations must look toward incorporating mobile management into their overall security portfolio, including DR, to ensure that data is comprehensively protected and they can recover quickly in the event of a disaster or data-loss event.