The value of data integrity in modern business cannot be emphasized. Data breaches, accidental deletions, and compliance difficulties necessitate strong storage solutions, especially in highly regulated industries.
This is where immutable storage comes in. Immutable means “not able to change or be changed”. This is why immutable storage is becoming an increasingly important component of an organization’s data strategy; knowing that the data you store will not change or is resistant to intentional falsification allows you to be confident in data protection, compliance management, and security.
What is Immutable Storage?
So, what is immutable storage? A reliable data backup is essential for any business, especially if it handles significant or sensitive data such as customer payment information or health records. Unfortunately, while data backups are designed to safeguard your important files from being lost or destroyed, they are not impervious. What happens if a security breach affects the data backup itself?
In computing, an immutable object cannot be updated or modified once created. Similarly, immutable storage implies that the data cannot be modified or destroyed in a data storage context. As a result, immutable storage can be utilized in various applications to prevent your most essential files from being modified, deleted, or tampered with. Finally, immutable storage provides the best data protection for your business.
How Does Immutable Storage Work?
Immutable storage is the best option to ensure your data cannot be edited or erased. While one of the benefits of cloud storage is that data may be accessed from many devices, this does pose some risks to the data. Data recovery may not always be possible if your systems have been compromised.
Because files in immutable storage are read-only, they are not susceptible to loss, accidental deletion, corruption, cyberattacks, or other problems that could jeopardize your data. Immutable storage ensures that your most essential files can be easily recovered.
Some immutable storage services allow you to set immutability for a specific period. In these circumstances, the data will be retained in its original form until the term expires; at this point, you can edit or delete the files as needed.
Why Is Immutable Storage Essential for Data Protection
Immutable storage can be used in any industry to prevent essential data from being altered or deleted. The following are four of the main advantages of employing immutable storage to secure your files:
Protect Against Ransomware and Other Cyberattacks
As the frequency of cyberattacks increases, data backups have become an important factor for enterprises. Ransomware assaults are proving to be exceptionally costly—averaging $1.85 million in recovery costs, which include downtime, ransom payments, and lost revenue—the need for strong preventive measures has never been greater. Immutable storage is a formidable option, providing unrivaled protection against ransomware and other cyber-attacks.
Immutable storage reduces the risk of data compromise by ensuring that files stay unalterable and resistant to harmful modification. This proactive strategy protects enterprises from the severe effects of cyberattacks, improves data security, protects financial resources, and ensures operational continuity in the face of changing cybersecurity threats.
Avoid Accidental File Deletion
Even if you instruct your employees to preserve and backup data regularly, human error and device failure are almost unavoidable. When many employees have regular access to sensitive files, the danger of accidental deletion or change increases.
Rather than risk losing crucial data, immutable storage ensures that important files are not unintentionally removed or overwritten. You can also specify when the immutability will expire if you need to examine or update these files.
Maintain Data Authenticity
Immutable storage ensures data correctness and avoids manipulation, which is a top priority for regulatory agencies. It also protects the integrity of diverse file types. From protecting video surveillance footage to preserving the authenticity of log files, historical analytics data, and digital evidence, immutable storage provides a comprehensive solution for ensuring the dependability and security of vital information assets. This capability is crucial in ensuring compliance, increasing transparency, and building trust in data integrity across various sectors and regulatory environments.
Meet Regulatory Compliance Requirements
Immutable storage protects critical files from loss or theft and helps businesses comply with legal requirements regarding the storage of sensitive data such as payment information and health records. By keeping data unalterable and safe, immutable storage solutions provide a strong framework for achieving strict compliance standards, reducing legal risks, and protecting the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive information.
Use Cases of Immutable Storage
Immutable storage can be an effective data backup solution for any firm, but some industries require the integrity of their files more than others.
In addition to preserving information, industries with data retention rules must adhere to specific guidelines for how long data should be archived. Here are some applications for immutable storage.
Healthcare
Any organization that manages healthcare data, such as patient records, understands how critical it is to protect this information. These files are critical to a healthcare company’s daily operations but must also be adequately protected to comply with regulatory obligations such as HIPAA.
Financial Institutions
Cyberattacks frequently target organizations that use and hold financial information. Immutable storage prevents hackers from stealing critical information such as credit card numbers, addresses, and social security numbers.
Furthermore, many financial organizations must follow SEC requirements that require electronically stored information to be in a write-once-read-many format, which immutable storage can offer.
Law Enforcement
Law enforcement agencies often retain massive amounts of video and audio surveillance data, critical for prosecutions and trials. By employing immutable storage to guarantee the legitimacy of this material, these businesses can ensure that the files may be utilized as evidence in the court process.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the importance of data integrity in today’s corporate environment cannot be emphasized enough. Immutable storage protects data from breaches, deletions, and compliance difficulties, particularly in regulated industries. It strengthens data protection by ensuring it remains unchangeable and immune to alteration. It also improves compliance management and security. In an era of data exposure to various dangers, adopting immutable storage is critical for firms looking to protect their digital assets.