Implementing Backup and Recovery: The Readiness Guide for the Enterprise

Security of Backups

Security of the backups is something else that must be taken into consideration. Your business might require encrypted backups so that the data on the tapes cannot be recovered without the proper key or password. Many backup and recovery applications offer this kind of backup, but there is a performance penalty associated with encrypted backups. The data will be encrypted on the client system before being sent across the network, so this will require CPU cycles on the client and will also slow down the rate of data being presented to the network for backup. The data is very secure, since it is encrypted before it is sent across the network and is still encrypted when written to tape. This also requires the key be known in order to do a restore. Most people rely on keeping the media secure rather than implementing data security by using encryption.