Gary J, security consultant of the Disk storage and network security portal,starts off every conversation with IT senior management with the question 'Did u ever stop to think that data backups are the biggest security threats facing your company today?'

The usual response from corporate IT big-wigs is 'No way. Data backups are supposed to help us recover from security threats and not a security threat'. And where are backups usually stored? Backups are usually stored in the most accessible part of the office for easy backup data recovery!

Gary Joseph calls for a contrarian view on physical data backups. Physical data backups may be necessary, but you have to keep them under lock and key. Most organizations store corporate data securely in ultra- tight security data centers. Corporate data centers also have an elaborate network of firewalls, demilitarized zones and honeypots to reduce security risks to the system. However, corporate data center management never ensures that backups of even the most mission critical applications are secure.

Offsite data backups have become quite popular in recent times in corporate data centers, due to the ease of use and automatic provision of business continuity without any elaborate BCP planning.

Gary's organization is a huge supporter of offline data backups and suggests that offline data backups are the future and can even be combined with technology offshoring initiatives in order to save money in creating the offline data center.

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