The cloud computing market has spread exponentially and it is expected to grow even more in the coming years. Similarly, the use of backups has become more common than ever and more and more companies are shifting towards them.

Demystifying ransomware protection

Imagine if you wake up one day, go to your office, login to your workstation and see a message that all your files have been locked. Ransom is required in order to get the decryption key so that you can unlock them.

Now, also imagine, that there are no backups for your data. I don’t want to be the one who bursts your bubble but in this scenario, you are simply helpless. You would have to pay the ransom, while suffering downtime at the same time, in order to gain back access to your files and systems.

Now, if you had a backup, you would simply use it to recover your files and continue with your work and then figure out later how the attack happened. This way, there will be no amount of data loss and it would save your money as well.

This sounds wonderful, right? The second scenario I mean, not the scenario where you had to pay the ransom money, as let’s be honest, no one likes that. But how was it made possible? What technology helped make it work?

Well, this is where the blockchain technology comes into play. Many vendors are using blockchain technology to create efficient, secure and reliable backups.

What’s on the platter?

So what will backup solutions hosted on the cloud bring to the fore? And how can cloud backups be considered foolproof? Well, here are some of the points they should fulfill.

• They need to be very recent and up to date with current security systems.
• They should be secure against any sort of tampering and theft.
• They shouldn’t be destroyed by a ransomware attack.
• They should be quick and easy to deploy.

In order to achieve these goals, backups should be stored in several locations with one copy of them stored off-site, on different storage media and should most definitely be encrypted. In other words, it should basically follow the 3-2-1 rule and this is why blockchain technology makes sense as it can help achieve these goals and guidelines.

Why blockchain?

Blockchain is a decentralized system that can keep track of all the changes in the form of a distributed database that also keeps a continuously growing list of transitions. Every change in the block results in a different hash value, thus providing the opportunity to add a digital signature to each and every data set. So, this is why, you can be absolutely sure that the backup you are about to deploy is very recent and has not been tampered or mishandled by any unauthorized personnel.

How does blockchain technology help?

The main reason why businesses use blockchain technology is because they know that is highly reliable. The blockchain creates trust in a way that it creates a complete copy of the chain itself, which shows each and every transaction as it occurs. This copy is held by the entire network. If someone tries to cheat or ‘access’ the system, they can be very easily identified and pulled up.

Backing up on the blockchain

When you back up your enterprise data, on-premises or in the cloud, you expect the vendor to efficiently backup those files. This is achieved by blockchain technology as it delivers an additional level of confidence to the authenticity of your business or enterprise. Blockchain backups can be used to verify a change (or no change) in the data. For instance, if you want to confirm whether your backups have changed or not, blockchain creates a certificate for each file. This certificate can be used to check if the file has been changed or not. This is done by timestamps and keeping a history of changes.

Blockchain backups also help greatly in supporting many copyright claims which can help visual or musical artists greatly.

Understanding data migration

Data migration can be a very difficult and time-consuming task which can prove to be costly and may result in some data loss as well. Longer the migration task, lower the ROIs and hence longer the downtime. This sort of disruptions can be very harmful for any business or enterprise and they simply cannot afford it.

So, what’s the final take?

Blockchain technology is a great step in tech and in the cloud industry. It is a remarkable mechanism that can guarantee that there are no more missed transactions, human errors or data loss. Above this, blockchain helps to make sure that the backups are secure and protected from any tampering or deletion. If you are looking to explore scalable and secure solutions on the blockchain or are trying to move your data to the cloud to experience the benefits of data security and data interoperability, our team of blockchain enthusiasts and cloud experts are ready to help.

This is a guest post contribution by George Williams, who works at Stonefly.

Author Bio:

George Williams has over 13 years of technical writing and copywriting experience in the data storage, backup and disaster recovery, and archiving markets. George helps curate content and works with numerous publishers and technology blogs to spread awareness and knowledge of data storage technology.