Every day, your business data faces threats, whether from hackers who attack computers every 39 seconds, software or hardware failure, or simple human error. Any of these problems could lead to loss of data, customers’ trust, or even your business. How can you keep your business data secure to maintain business continuity? Several governmental and industry regulatory bodies have devised mandates to define how organizations manage and protect their data. At the heart of these mandates is a robust backup strategy for backup and reporting compliance.

Why Are Backups Necessary for Compliance?

A data loss or breach can devastate a business for years after the event. Just take the case of Banner Health, which agreed to pay HHS $1.25M in regulatory fines after a 2016 data breach compromised the health records of almost 2.8 million customers. Cases like these are why regulatory bodies require backups and reporting as part of their compliance strategies. When businesses create a secure copy of data, they can restore it in case of any data loss or breach. They create redundancies and safeguard their business from hackers, software or hardware failure, or human error. Without backups, businesses are risking their data as well as legal and financial repercussions, not to mention their ability to keep the lights on.

These mandates come from various sources, including the government, industry regulators, and internal mandates. Here are some of the most common compliance requirements for backup and reporting:

• HIPAA requires healthcare organizations to back up patient data at least once daily and maintain copies at a secure location off-site. They must also preserve documented backup and recovery plans and conduct periodic testing.
• PCI/DSS requires companies to keep credit and debit card details. It also stipulates that businesses should store backup data at a secure off-site location.
• CCPA states that users have the right to delete data, so you must also determine how to remove that information from the backup. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is similar but with fewer restrictions.
• SOX outlines IT compliance requirements for electronic records and requires off-site backups of financial data that are compliant with SOX standards. These records must be available for seven years for auditors. This can be challenging to store in the main database, so this information must be recoverable from backups.
• FINRA requires organizations to regularly back up and encrypt their critical data and store it off-site with a retention period of up to seven years. This regulation also requires regular testing of recovery data to ensure data restoration from backup tapes.

Keeping your business security in compliance is challenging. Regulations are growing in number and strictness, and complying with them is even more complicated because every vendor you use must also be compliant. Backup-as-a-service (BaaS) providers can be indispensable partners for businesses that must protect their critical data and comply with all security regulations.

Secure Your Company and Data

Every day, there is a new story about a data loss or breach at a business. At the time of writing this post, there was a massive breach at AT&T, which leaked the personal information of millions of current and former customers to the dark web. These losses happen so frequently that we rarely heed the precautionary lessons of its victims, many of whom would have been able to restore their data if they just had a robust backup strategy.

Data loss can devastate a business. Establishing a reliable backup strategy or partnering with a BaaS provider will assure your customers that you can protect their data and yours. Backups are at the heart of regulations because they work and will keep your business working.

Ozone IT’s infrastructure and Backup as a Service solutions are scalable and can adapt to a business’s changing needs and regulations. We provide a hybrid on-premises and cloud storage solution, making it the most secure way to back up your files and restore them quickly. We also monitor and manage data backups to ensure there are no security gaps. Even if your system goes down, your data is still safe until you can get back up and running. Contact Ozone IT Services today.