Secure Online Backup

It’s been a while since I posted in reference to my “Secure Online Backup” series. In my, “What Makes an Online Backup Solution, Secure?” post I wanted to address the need to keep servers patched, so here it goes.

Patches are an important part of server reliability and security. There are two types of patches that should be installed as soon as they become available. This is especially true for servers that are “serving” information over the Internet. The first type of patch that we should be concerned about is one that fixes errors within the software running on the server. A particular piece of software could have some issues that keep it from functioning properly. If it crashes or has a memory leak or some other type of issue, it may affect the server somehow. This is less common with modern servers today but could still be an issue for software that doesn’t deal with memory leaks properly. Probably the most important reason for patching software is that it may be tied in with a service that is “served” over the Internet. This is especially true on Linux. So patching software is an important part of server reliability.

The second type of patch that we need to be concerned with are security patches. A security patch fixes a known vulnerability or exploit. Often times, these patches are created in response to a known threat. This means that a server may not always be 100% secure due to the fact that a malicious party may know about the exploit before anything is ever done to resolve it. As previously stated, software companies often release security patches *after* a known vulnerability or exploit has been discovered. It is good practice to install security patches immediately.

In addition to security patches, it is often desirable to have a server that only serves a limited number of services. For example, a backup server only needs to provide the necessary services to allow backups to be performed. If it starts providing additional services, such as email for example, the server will also need to maintain patches for its email services. This can make the server less secure due to the fact that more potential vulnerabilities and exploits can be used to gain unauthorized access.

The SecureBackup backup servers only “serve” data backup services. This makes the service as secure as it can be in terms of vulnerabilities and exploits.