Data Backup Series: Hikvision Senior Director of Cybersecurity on Data Backup Security & Operating System Tips

Global

Global - English

Asia

Europe

Oceania

ANZ - English

Latin America

North America

Middle East and Africa

Cancel

Reset

Submit

Last week, we posted blog series part one and two about why backing up data is important, by Hikvision’s senior director of cybersecurity, Chuck Davis. Today’s blog will cover backups and security, as well as instructions for various operating systems.

Backups and Security

One thing that we haven’t covered in the HikWire Data Backup Blog series is security. While backing up data doesn’t directly improve your security posture, it prepares you to respond to a security incident. The most important step in securing backups is encryption, especially when backing up to the cloud. Here are a few things to consider.

Local backups: Check to see if your backup solution has a feature to encrypt your backups. If not, encrypt your backup drive before you start your backups. Here are some whole disk encryption tools that you can use to encrypt your external drive.
Cloud backups: Check with your cloud provider and see if they encrypt your data at rest (Is your data encrypted while being stored on their cloud servers?). Most cloud providers offer very basic encryption to make the whole process easy on you and me, but they manage the keys to encrypt and decrypt your data which means that a snooping employee of your cloud provider could potentially see your files.
File encryption tools: For cloud backups, I highly recommend encrypting your data before it is uploaded to the cloud. This is called Pre-Internet Encryption (PIE). You can use this strategy on local backups too. There are many PIE solutions on the market. I like a tool called Boxcryptor, which encrypts files before they are uploaded to any of my cloud providers.

Cloud Backup Providers

There are a lot of options when it comes to cloud solutions, from creating your own backup environment with cloud storage, like Amazon Web Services, to full featured backups solutions. I have not tested many of these but I have tried a few. Like me, you probably have a bunch of these accounts already: Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, iDrive, O365, and many others offer free storage to get you hooked, and then charge a fee if you need more storage space. Rather than reviewing them here, below are some reviews from experts who have tested and compared cloud backup solutions:

PC Magazine, “The Best Online Backup Services for 2020”
Tom’s Guide, “The Best Cloud Backup Services in 2020”

Instructions for Various Operating Systems

Finally, I want to leave you with some instructions on how to create backups for your operating system. Again, I’m leaving you with links that will walk you through the process.

Windows:

Mac:

iOS:

Android:

How to Backup an Android Phone on the Google Cloud

Linux

If you’re using Linux, you likely don’t need to be told how to back up your data but just in case, here are 11 Linux backup solutions.

Hikvision has posted quite a bit of content on relevant and timely cybersecurity topics. Visit this link for more cybersecurity tips and posts.

Cybersecurity

Subscribe to our email newsletter to get the latest, trending content from Hikvision

Hik-Partner Pro

Security Business Assistant. At Your Fingertips. Learn more

Scan and download the app

Download

Hik-Partner Pro

Get a better browsing experience

You are using a web browser we don’t support. Please try one of the following options to have a better experience of our web content.

Data Backup Series: Hikvision Senior Director of Cybersecurity on Data Backup Security & Operating System Tips

Subscribe to newsletter

Get a better browsing experience