Protect your data – 3-2-1 method

Everyone has important digital data. Regardless of whether you are a private individual who wants to protect holiday photos or a large company that stores strategic documents, it is worth remembering the 3-2-1 rule. What is it all about?

3 kopie danych

We should keep at least three copies of data due to the risk of damage or loss of the medium. Regardless of how we store the data, there is always a risk of damage or loss. The probability that all three media will be lost or damaged is many times lower than if we had only two or, even worse, only one copy. 

Of course, it is much more challenging to provide three copies of company data than to secure private documents or holiday photographs. The cost of flash carriers (the popular USB flash drive) or external drives have become so low that it is worth investing and storing the most important files on not just three, but more copies. On the other hand, in the case of corporate data, for advanced data protection, professional solutions such as Veeam, Nakivo or Acronis help us to, for example, encrypt copies, initiate automate backup, ensure GDPR compliance and provide compression.

2 różne technologie

In addition to storing several copies of the data, we should also consider the diversification of carriers and use at least two types. For private use, we can use external drives, flash memory (USB flash drives), record data on CDs or DVDs and store them in the cloud. Many companies now offer online data storage services including. Google, Microsoft and Apple, while together with other services (most often e-mail) we can store a copy of our files on the servers of a given provider. To protect corporate data, however, it is worth using not only two different carrier technologies (e.g. Server + cloud), but also solutions provided by two different vendors.

1 odrębna lokalizacja

The third element of effective data loss prevention is putting one copy of the data in a different location than the rest. In the event of a fire, other random events or burglary with theft, storing data in another place also provides us with access to it despite the situation. The most convenient solution is to store a copy of all data in the cloud – which also allows you to supplement the data with new documents or photos. It's also a good idea to get family or friends to keep a USB flash drive or an external drive (don't forget to encrypt them), although in this case, of course, supplementing the data with new files is more complicated than in the case of cloud storage.

In a corporate environment, storing data in a separate location is one of the most important strategic activities aimed at maintaining business continuity. An effective solution is the use of professional cloud solutions (Acronis). Transfer of one of the physical servers to the data centre is also a popular solutions, where the data is secured by local solutions (Veeam, Nakivo) using a fast dedicated link.

Direct IT has extensive experience in securing data, and helps companies to develop business continuity and disaster recovery plans (Disaster Recovery). If the data in your company are not properly secured and you do not have a failure or random events recovery plan, just call us.