Every organization has one or more data protection solutions in place to protect the enterprise data backup like databases, critical servers, etc. but when it comes to end user data which is on the user’s laptop, desktop, or VDI scenario most of them are not having any data backup policy.  These laptops and desktops are used either for business or personal use but it is just ignored. Due to current pandemic, users are scattered, many of them people are working remotely, working from home etc. and home/remote work culture expected to be continued. With new work culture, the edge devices are often more vulnerable then data residing on sever and storage. The edge devices have information asset and we realize when the disaster happens therefore the laptop desktop data backup should be one of the top priority.

Importance of End user Data Backup.

As highlighted that end user data is vulnerable and actually it’s more. The server and storage are having RAID protection and in case of any drive failure there is no data loss. While the laptop/desktop will have just one drive and if fails, may lose entire data. In fact the latest copy of the data is stored on the edge devices. There is also possibility that we may lose the devices while travelling and what happens to those data, there is no way to recover it.

How Laptop desktop backup differ from Sever and Storage Backup?

The server and storage are in centralized data center having redundancy, security and mostly fixed IP address while end user are working from several locations (home, office, remote, client locations) and IP addresses keep changing. With traditional backup software we may not able to reach to these dynamic IPs. Also DNS doesn’t work well with end user devices. Unlike servers which are mostly backed up during off business works while laptop backup is done during working hours.

Are these any best practice to any evaluation criteria to backup your system?

Unlike serves, end user data backup is more touch-felly and there are different category of users having different type of data. It can be CXO, finance, HR, operations and support etc. The backup scenarios be and either file, folder, drive backup or whole system backup to recovery entire image on a failure of the disk. As a pilot project, we should start with few users from each category.

Should be use Cloud BaaS for Laptop Desktop Backup?

As users are distributed across multiple locations (head office, branch offices, work from home, remote worker, working from client location) its better to use cloud Backup as a Service Solution to avoid dependency of the VPN, DC access issues etc. These services are highly available and accessible from any location to take backup and restore the data.

Protection of end user data from Ransomware.

Ransomware attacks are growing significantly and primary attack is on windows systems. User’s needs to plan defensive steps to protect the data like do not open suspicious email, suspicious URL, close pop-up window, install latest security patch and next generation antivirus solution and take data backup on regular basis to alternate secure locations. The backup provides point in time restore to good known stage. Also some of the data protection solution provides both backup and end point security with end point detection and response (EDR) to save from Ransomware attack.