On the backups front, I have long felt that for secure backups it is essential that the backups are driven by the backup server. The backup server establishes a connection to the live server and backs up what it is configured to back up. The live server must have no access to the backup server, nor means to establish a connection to it.

If your backups are driven and controlled from your live server, then as soon as it is compromised the attacker has the option to modify what backups happen, or even prevent them entirely. If the live server has some kind of write access to the backup server then they can go on and compromise all your existing backups too.

If the backup server is the one initiating the backup but runs no externally accessible services, then it does a backup when it is configured to do a backup. If the live server has been compromised to the point where the backup server can't, then it can report the fact. No amount of corrupting the files on the live server will affect those on the backup server.

Of course you still need a suitable cycle of backups so you can go back as far as is necessary to recover.

I have two backup servers in different locations which do fairly comprehensive backups each night. When they're not doing that, they're switched off which makes them even harder to crack into.

John

--
Xronos Scheduler - https://xronos.uk/
All your school's schedule information in one place.
Timetable, activities, homework, public events - the lot
Live demo at https://schedulerdemo.xronos.uk/

--
GLLUG mailing list
[email protected]
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug

Reply via email to