Why is it important to encrypt data backups?

Otava continues its business continuity series of videos on data backup and replication by explaining why it is critical to encrypt your backups, especially if you have sensitive data.

Steven: Encryption in backup is critically important. It’s critically important. Let’s take, for example, you are doing backups to a hard drive, let’s say an external hard drive or to a tape, and you have, let’s say, PHI data, or you have credit card data in your backups. If your backup is not encrypted and it’s best practice to get that data off-site, what you’re doing is you’re opening up your exposure to a lot of peril. You’re exposing yourself needlessly.

We’ve all seen the accounts of Deb, the backup administrator, had her tapes in her purse or her external hard drive in her purse, or it was something left in the car and the car was broken into and that hard drive was stolen and the company had to report 50,000 records of personal health data was stolen because it wasn’t encrypted. That is why because the transient nature of backups and getting it off-site especially for small to medium size businesses, encryption is just so, so important to stop the theft of that backed-up data.