What Are Immutable Backups and Why Do They Matter for Object Storage?

For enterprise companies, there is nothing more important to maintaining consumer confidence or client protection than handling people’s data and files safely

For large organizations, lost data can have catastrophic financial, ethical, and legal consequences. That’s why conventional backups — though typically effective — shouldn't be used on their own. Instead, the backup process needs reinforcements to keep your data safe and secure. Those data reserves are known as immutable backup storage.

What Are Immutable Backups?

Immutable (or unchangeable) backups are copies of files and data that cannot be altered or tampered with for a preset period of time. Many businesses take advantage of immutable backups to ensure they have a secure backup in the event of a ransomware attack.

What Is an Immutable Infrastructure?

Immutable infrastructure refers to servers that cannot be modified, updated, edited, or deleted after deployment. In order to update the files being stored, the user must build new servers with the changes in place and decommission the old servers. This is in contrast to mutable servers, which are designed to accept alterations (upgrades, downgrades, new code deployments, and so on.) after initial deployment.

Why Are Immutable Backups Important?

Immutable backups aren’t just helpful in the case of server failure. They’re also useful for protection against ransomware.

Ransomware is a method of cyberattack that targets and encrypts data, making it inaccessible to its owner until a ransom is paid. While traditional forms of backups are effective, they are not foolproof. Today, ransomware is designed to attack backups themselves, putting your data at even more immediate risk. Even with high-priced security software and systems, backups are still attacked.

Immutable object storage provides data security that is vital to many businesses. Law enforcement, medical, legal, and financial industries all depend on the safety and security of the data for which they are responsible. These organizations require next-level security, and that’s exactly what immutable backup storage provides—a clean, recent copy of data that can be recovered quickly and protected easily.

Benefits of Immutable Storage

Immutable storage is the unsung hero of the data security world. There are a host of benefits that come with adopting this approach, including:

Recover Files at Any Time, Without Worry

One of the best parts of immutable backup storage is that it is designed to be deployed to your production servers immediately in the event of a data breach or loss. The data is preserved perfectly...waiting for when it’s needed. Unlike traditional backups, you don’t need to worry about immutable files being jeopardized. Immutable storage guarantees the information is safe and sound.

Consistent Protection Against Disaster

Immutable storage offers dependable protection against ransomware, natural disasters, outages, and more. In this backup environment, your data is not vulnerable to virtual or physical tampering. It provides peace of mind for many organizations that require that level of safety and security.

Stronger Data Compliance

Many organizations such as healthcare, finance, and data protection companies must adhere to strict data compliance, requiring them to have clean records and follow stringent retention policies. Immutable storage provides the means to adhere to these regulations by providing a safe, accessible place to store clean files.

Quicker Data Recovery

In the event of a data breach or loss, whether due to a cyberattack or another issue, it’s vital that you be able to quickly recover lost data. Using immutable backup storage ensures that a clean, recent copy can be uploaded to the servers within minutes.

How Does Immutable Storage Work?

Immutable storage can be applied to data stored on traditional platforms like disks or SSDs. However, cloud storage is becoming the most popular option among business, both for ease of use and protection.

Data preserved within immutable cloud storage is protected by the write-once-read-many (WORM) mechanism. When an employee saves files, they determine the duration they’d like them to be stored. They can be preserved indefinitely, though that isn’t usually the case. Once they upload data to the cloud, they set the immutability flag (a self-timer). This flag locks the files in place for a set time. At that point, the files cannot be tampered with.

Lyve Cloud and Immutable Backups

Lyve Cloud has built a reputation for reliable storage and backup solutions over our forty-plus years of service, protecting data for high-level enterprises through reliable, tested data encryption. We offer long-term retention and fast retrieval, as well as a scalable platform that provides flexible access and increased data durability.

Have questions about our immutable backup plans? Partner with a cloud storage product like Seagate Lyve Cloud to ensure your data storage is secure and cost effective. Learn more about how you can optimize your storage capabilities.