Regulatory Requirements and Backup Exec

A Backup Article Contributed by M. Larose

Regulatory Requirements and Backup Exec

Backup Exec can help with accurate and simple data protection. For a long while now company IT departments have limped along with cobbling software programs together to get just the right combination for data backup. It is a complex issue especially for those companies that face growing and growing mountains of data. The problem just gets worse.

Sometimes administrators break the data problem up into critical data, desktop data, mobile data but this just fragments the issue and makes recovery even more complex. Government regulations and ISO standards throw another pile of bones on the ever-growing stack making it all seem even more complex than before. But new software like Backup Exec are being developed with the goal of streamlining backup procedures and making the process easier to undertake.

The Data Scope of Backup Exec

Backup exec provides an interface from which to protect your data. The scope of your data resides on many types of devices from desktops, to laptops, to servers. The data sits on servers, data storage drives and maybe within more than one operating system and through more than several applications. Data sets sit in more than several databases, applications, and file management systems, files, records, and tables.

Data protection includes all of these and the protection of sites, groups, campuses, and buildings. Loss of data, damage of data, or bad or incorrect data affects the connectedness of data. One downed file could effectively spread throughout the enterprise and have the effect of hampering an administrative assistant, her boss, their customer, and the salesman that is logging in from the road. Backup Exec can protect that data across the board.

Backup Exec and Storage Management

Storage management is necessary to control cost and accessibility of data and to manage growth. Backup Exec provides the ability to manage this storage issue as part of data management. Through a common central interface all parts of data backup are brought together allowing the administrator and the data managers to understand the connection data makes throughout the company. The overall management of data has a set of rules that are decided upon when a backup plan and a disaster/recovery plan are created. These rules oversee and coordinate the movement and management of the company data.

Adding Security to Backup Exec

Security rules and within the Backup Exec software program this is true as well. Authentication and encryption is prevalent throughout the backup processes. Many Backup Exec products have strict ISO standards incorporated within them so any regulatory requirements you may have should be met through the use of Backup Exec. Check with your software manufacturer for verification. Security has its own structure with in Backup Exec and users must have not only folder permissions but they also must have file permissions within that folder as well.

In the beginning of data awareness people used a backup plan to protect their data because they chose to and they knew it was the right thing to do. With more and more regulations and auditing in place for some of us data protection has become the law and it must be in place and working perfectly. Backup Exec has been created to help with a smooth and accurate data backup plan.