ExaGrid's Eye on Deduplication

Securing backup data has become an absolute requirement for organizations of all sizes. Sweeping government regulations such as HIPAA, GLBA, Sarbanes-Oxley and many others, have placed more stringent requirements on organizations to back-up and secure a wide range of data, from healthcare and credit records for individuals, to financial and confidential business information for corporations.

Tape Backup - An Ever-present Security Risk
For decades, companies have been backing up data onto magnetic tapes and then transporting those tapes to an offsite location for long term archiving. However, this process is inherently cumbersome and lacks security.  Backup tapes are often moved via an employee's personal vehicle, or in cases where the information is extremely sensitive, by bonded delivery truck. But no matter what the transport method, tapes are often misplaced, lost or even stolen. Cases of lost corporate or consumer data have become all too familiar in today's headlines.

While organizations can resort to encryption to protect the confidentiality of the data, using encryption products can be expensive, time-consuming and complex, especially for mid-sized and small enterprise companies.

Disk-based Backup Cuts the Risk and Enhances Security
Many companies are moving to disk backup to shorten backup windows and to gain faster and more reliable backups and restores, but they're also gaining many security benefits in the process.  Because disk backup solutions reside in the same data center as application servers and primary data storage, backup data is inherently secured by network and physical data center security, leveraging the same security that is used for the rest of the data and network components.

Additionally, many organizations use disk backup systems at secondary sites to eliminate offsite tape transport and storage, and to avoid costly and complex encryption technology. The second site acts as a live disk-based repository, providing fast recovery in the event of a disaster, while also taking advantage of existing network and data center security. Data deduplication technology reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted to the offsite location, enabling the high speed replication and creating a secure offsite repository for the data. All data transfers between the primary site and the offsite disk-based system occur over secure, encrypted network connections. 

Disk backup systems with deduplication helps IT departments retain vital data for rapid, reliable retrieval in a highly secure way, in both primary and offsite locations.  All while reducing or even eliminating tapes many challenges and security risks.

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