Cloud Backup and Recovery for Endpoint Devices Executive Summary
Armed with their own devices and faster wireless speeds, your employees are looking to access corporate data on the move. They are creating, consuming and storing missioncritical business information on their mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets. Often they are using these work devices for personal use as well which means your sensitive corporate data is mingling with personal emails, photos and files. Armed with their own devices and faster wireless speeds, your employees are looking to access corporate data on the move. They are creating, consuming and storing mission-critical business information on their mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets. Often they are using these work devices for personal use as well which means your sensitive corporate data is mingling with personal emails, photos and files. As noted by Forrester Research, in order to avoid employees operating in an IT underground, you may be one of many organizations that are developing a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy that addresses security concerns. But while allowing employees to use their device in your corporate environment may boost morale, it also moves sensitive data outside the boundaries of the enterprise data center onto devices that are not under your control. Even if you have implemented policies governing the applications employees are allowed to use on mobile devices to access corporate data and configuring them so the memory can be wiped clean when required, you still stand to lose access to this data unless it is safely backed up to your authorized data center. Imagine if an employee s laptop or tablet containing critical business data was lost or stolen: You could remotely wipe the device to prevent anyone else from having access to the information, but what if you never backed up the data? You too According to Gartner, by 2015 more than 60% of enterprises will have suffered material loss of sensitive corporate data via mobile devices. would also lose access to data. And how do you ensure your data and corporate intellectual property (IP) is protected? If you do not have a policy for backing up the data on these endpoint devices, there s a good chance your employees have been backing up these devices on their own. Some backup data to USB devices, some to external hard drives and some to unsecure public cloud services such as icloud. Others use sync and share software. In all cases, you run the risk of data being leaked outside your firewall, and that means your IP may be residing unprotected on devices which can be lost or stolen or might be getting shared indiscriminately across multiple devices with people who shouldn t have access to it. If you don t have a policy for backing up endpoint devices, your corporate data is at risk. To protect yourself from lost competitive advantage, loss of reputation and regulatory non-compliance, you need a secure end-to-end data backup and recovery solution that protects all of your data in the enterprise, including the data sitting on your employees mobile devices. Introduction With the rampant popularity of tablets and smartphones, the BYOD phenomenon is not going away. As employees bring their own devices to the office, your corporate IP now resides on the same devices as family photos and personal text messages. Have you ever wondered what happens to your data when an employee leaves the organization? What if the device is lost and gets into the hands of someone who should not have access to this information? As a method of protecting corporate data, many enterprises have obtained the consent of their employees to wipe the device of all the data if it s lost, whether it s a corporate or personal device. However, this has lulled some enterprises into a false sense of security that their data is secure and protected. The reality is, once you wipe the data, no one has access to it anymore including you. ¹ Your workforce is already using their personal computers to boost efficiency. Instead of forcing them to operate in an IT underground, it s time to develop a bring-your-owndevice (BYOD) program that addresses security concerns while building a solid base for future innovation. Forrester Research ² Bring-your-own-device (BYOD) is an alternative strategy allowing employees, business partners and other users to use a personally selected and purchased client device to execute enterprise applications and access data. Gartner Research
Figure 1: Asigra supports the backup and restore on a wide range of endpoint devices and operating systems (Road Map) WAN Data Center DS-SYSTEM MULTI-TENANCY STORAGE DS-LICENSE SERVER If you don t have a policy for backing up data sitting on endpoint devices, its possible your employees have been using their own methods to create another copy of the data, including unsecure USB devices and sync and share software. Unfortunately, this places corporate data out of your control and potentially puts it in the hands of people who should not have access to your corporate IP. Imagine if your competition gets its hands on your sensitive business information or if it reaches the media. Think of instances where highly sensitive data in regulated sectors such as healthcare and financial services is leaked. Your business may just come to an end and you may be left facing legal consequences. The Risk of Leaving Endpoint Data Unprotected Business decision makers understand the need to safeguard data on these devices as much as they protect all on-premise data that resides on your LAN. But many IT departments are slow to enforce such protection because of user resistance. Mobile workforces that connect to enterprise networks oppose the installation of any backup policies on their laptops as they fear long backup processes will reduce the performance of their laptop. In fact, when it comes to personal devices, whether it s laptops or other mobile devices, end users are wary of installing any applications provided by corporate IT. After all, they contend, it is their device and they have the right to refuse to install any software that may harm their mobile device. IT departments might be inclined to look the other way when it comes to backing up endpoint devices to control bandwidth costs. They may avoid backing up mobile devices because it reduces the potential for clogged networks when mobile devices hop back on to your LAN after a long time and time-consuming backup jobs kick in. IT departments may also be concerned that managing the backup of these devices will need special tools and strategies to support the wide array of devices that employees bring into the office. Regardless, not implementing a policy for backing up the data on these devices leaves you exposed to the threat of losing confidential information and the consequences of data loss.
The Asigra Solution Asigra Cloud Backup provides you with a single solution to protect all of your enterprise data no matter where it resides. You can use its capabilities to backup data and applications from every device that stores confidential business information. From enterprise servers to physical and virtual machines to desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones and cloud-based applications, Asigra Cloud Backup can backup all data seamlessly to your own authorized, secure offsite data center. Multiple OS Support Data protection for endpoint devices must be broad-based and must include support for multiple operating systems and platforms, as organizations and individual users are loyal to their own particular brand or device. Asigra Cloud Backup is hardware and software agnostic and supports all major operating systems. Whether desktop or laptop users use Windows, Linux or Mac OS, our software can protect the data on their PCs, as well as Apple ios and Android devices, which covers the majority of tablets and smartphones being used in corporate environments today, whether they are personal devices brought into the organization by employees or issued by the company. Bandwidth and Storage Optimized backups Asigra Cloud Backup incremental forever functionality ensures only changed files are sent over the network to the backup repository. In addition, all data is deduplicated and compressed before it is transmitted to optimize bandwidth use. Asigra Cloud Backup also performs deduplication at the target to ensure the data is stored in the most efficient form in your secure offsite data center. Certified Apps available for download Our software application for tablets and smartphones is available for download from the Apple App Store and from Google Play; your employees can download it for free and help you overcome their objections about not wanting to install a suspect custom application on their own devices. According to MSP Mentor, 52% of companies offering BYOD placed a mobile usage policy in place that their employees must agree to and sign. For more information about Asigra Cloud Backup, email info@datastore365.co.uk or call 08000 481 848. Secure backups Asigra Cloud Backup features the highest levels of encryption to ensure your data is encrypted at the source, safeguarding it during transmission and at its destination. The Asigra platform uses secure AES encryption to encode data so unauthorized persons cannot access it during backup or restore processes or when it is stored in backup repositories. Intuitive and easy to use Asigra Cloud Backup helps you configure when you want the backups to run, so everyone s data is backed up at regular intervals and always protected. It features a simple and userfriendly interface, even allowing employees to run backup and restore jobs on their devices if needed.
For more information about Asigra Cloud Backup, email info@datastore365.co.uk or call 08000 481 848. About Asigra Cloud Backup Award-winning Asigra Cloud Backup is an agentless hardware and software platform agnostic cloud backup, recovery and restore software solution that supports servers, virtual machines, desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, cloud-based applications, enterprise applications and databases enabling organizations to resume business operations quickly while reducing costs and achieving peace of mind. About Asigra Trusted since 1986, Asigra provides organizations around the world the ability to recover their data now from anywhere through a global network of partners who deliver cloud backup and recovery services as public, private and/or hybrid deployments. As the industry s fi rst enterprise agentless cloud-based recovery software to provide data backup and recovery of servers, virtual machines, endpoint devices, databases and applications, SaaS and IaaS based applications, Asigra lowers the total cost of ownership, reduces recovery time objectives, eliminates silos of backup data by providing a single consolidated repository, and provides 100% recovery assurance. Asigra s revolutionary patent-pending Recovery License Model provides organizations with a cost effective data recovery business model unlike any other offered in the storage market. Asigra has been recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor and has been included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software since 2010. 2013 Asigra Inc. Asigra, the Asigra logo, Asigra Cloud Backup, Recovery is Everything, Recovery License Model and Recovery Tracker are registered trademarks of Asigra Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective owners. [09/13]