Within the field of backup and disaster recovery, air-gapped backup is quickly becoming one of the most often used strategies. Most backup and disaster recovery service providers either currently provide it as an integrated feature or are in the process of incorporating it into their products.
A backup copy stored on a storage space not exposed from an external network or the internet is referred to as an air gap backup copy. Air gapping is often given a significant part to play in the 3-2-1 backup strategy, which is universally acknowledged as a standard for best practices in the industry. There are three copies of data in this technique, each on a different form of medium, with one copy off-site.
Traditional backup solutions are no longer secure against ransomware threats, which have become more advanced. To secure your backup servers against ransomware attacks, you must have data security procedures in place that can protect both your production and backup environments. Air-gapped backups solve this problem.
It's critical for organizations to know the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy for data air-gapping now that the classic definition of an air gap has been broadened by several storage medium and consumption model applications.
Air-gapping is a cutting-edge data security technology that isolates and detaches target storage volumes from insecure networks, production environments, and host systems. Backups that are saved in air-gapped volumes are referred to as air gap backups.
The default setting for air-gapped volumes is for them to be switched off, which means that applications, databases, users, and workloads operating in the production environment cannot access them. The data stored in a device or storage media with an air gap can only be accessed once switched on.
Depending on the system and vendor, there are several ways to switch on and off air-gap volumes. Air-gap volumes can also be deployed on-premises or in the cloud, depending on the provider.
Disk storage is the most common method for creating an air gap between backups and the rest of the network. The backup data is duplicated onto an external disk drive before being physically removed and maintained in a storage library normally hosted off-site. Air-gap backups are therefore physically isolated from external networks and storage devices.
A physical air gap has been created in recent years by introducing off-site object storage and disconnected file systems that solve some of the pitfalls of disk storage, such as long recovery times. When data is ingested, these systems require a link to the network; hence, extra protections have been incorporated into these systems to make it easier to maintain isolation.
The usage of non-removable storage media has ushered in the idea of a logical air gap. Using network and user access policies, logical air gaps isolate the production and main backup environments from one another.
The backup copy can be isolated by admins removing access from production-accessible UIs or host or administrative networks, for example. Secure networking ports and firewalls only allow data to be moved when opened and closed in response to a transfer request. A physical connection to the authorized air gap system is required for some systems, and the interface must be unplugged when not in use.
One way some cloud service providers establish an air gap is by keeping backup copies in a separate storage account that requires a different set of login credentials or in another locale. In addition, certain enterprise decentralized storage systems, including Slik, have built-in air gap features.
Air gaps are a common data security measure used by cloud storage providers and hosts. Digital security methods make them roughly fall into the logical air-gap category. Air gaps are created in cloud storage systems by implementing additional access restrictions (such as additional log-in passwords, PINs and cryptography, etc.) or simply by using a decentralized storage solution to distribute backups into different locations that are hard for attackers to access.