In a modern digital-dependent landscape, data protection is crucial for any organization. Government organizations must protect the data they store and operate even more strictly. For a government organization, only a proper data protection system can safeguard sensitive government data and public services, and ensure the uninterrupted functioning of essential services. NAKIVO Backup & Replication can meet the specific requirements of government organizations due to flexible customization capabilities. With this solution, you can ensure the continuous availability of vital government data and support operational seamlessness.
Data Backup for Government Organizations: Threats and Challenges
The data that government organizations operate and store include public service databases, financial or administrative information, important reports, and, of course, citizen records with different types of personal data. Data loss incidents or any other incident causing data unavailability can result in the disruption of services and compromised security. What’s more, government operations are under the effect of such attacks, threatening the citizens’ comfort, privacy, and public good.
The specifics of government organizations lead to frequent data-related threats and challenges. Let’s start with the reasons why government organizations require advanced data protection systems in the first place.
Governments Are Prime Targets of Cyberattacks
Government institutions — local or state-level — have hackers targeting their IT infrastructures and data deliberately. The hackers’ objectives may vary: from stealing sensitive data and selling it to disrupting government operations in a certain area to achieve military goals. Government organizations use IT infrastructures to enable and support numerous processes, thus a cyberattack paralyzing those infrastructures can have a cascade effect with unpredictable consequences causing harm or even death.
Organizations Use Legacy Software
Government organizations are inert when speaking of any change in workflows, and their IT systems built with budgets in mind are usually cumbersome and outdated. Such organizations continue to use legacy solutions even after vendors officially stop supporting their software. As a result, the threat of unpatched vulnerabilities is present whenever legacy software is involved.
No Qualified Tech Specialists
Hunting talented tech experts is a challenge for government organizations as their compensation levels are usually lower than high-level IT specialists may expect. Consequently, most qualified employees prefer private companies with higher salaries, while government organizations build and maintain their infrastructures at a minimal functional level to support critical workflows and services. As a result, data protection is deprioritized and is considered an expensive privilege that the available staff can’t build and maintain due to time or qualification constraints.
Digital Transformation and Cybersecurity in Conflict
Although government organizations have their funds and time strictly limited, they need to ensure a digital transformation that makes public services modernized, more accessible, fast, and convenient. Considering cybersecurity from this angle, the problem with digital transformation is not only in budget and effort distribution but also in synchronization between the two. A change in the organization’s IT infrastructure requires proper adaptation in the cybersecurity circuit that would let new nodes and workflows run smoothly, on the one hand, and maintain the proper data protection level, on the other.
Compliance Requirements
Government organizations are subject to compliance laws and regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA, which means they carry legal responsibilities for citizens’ data protection and privacy. Compliance requirements also set data storage, processing, archival, and disposal rules that are obligatory. Protection from data loss incidents, which is not possible without backups, is vital to keep up with legislative requirements in such cases.
Specific Information to Backup
With the challenges above as well as other factors, a dependable backup solution for government organizations is a necessity. The data that such organizations need to back up include:
- Citizen Records: Backing up citizen data is paramount to maintain security, control and efficient public service delivery.
- Public Service Databases: To deliver services on time and provide the required transparency, government organizations need public service records available 24/7.
- Financial Records: Financial records’ backup ensures data availability for fiscal responsibility, auditing and compliance.
- Administrative Information: Secure and stable access to administrative resources is the basis of efficient and timely government operations, decision-making, and public policy development.
- Security and Compliance Data: Data protection systems can protect national interests and support public trust in government institutions by ensuring data security and regulatory compliance.
NAKIVO Backup & Replication: The Data Protection Solution for Government Organizations
To integrate reliable backup and recovery workflows in the IT infrastructures of government organizations, consider a backup solution like NAKIVO Backup & Replication. This all-in-one data protection solution enables you to create efficient and reliable backups of virtual and physical machines, cloud, and SaaS workloads, along with entire infrastructures, including hybrid ones. NAKIVO supports multiple platforms (VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV) and operating systems (Windows, Linux, NAS OS’s, among others), thus suiting any IT environment.
The features making NAKIVO Backup & Replication an effective solution to back up government organizations’ data are as follows:
Flexible Recovery Options
In government organizations, rapid recovery of citizen records, public service databases, and financial records is essential for providing uninterrupted public services. NAKIVO Backup & Replication enables you to restore entire environments, separate machines, folders, app objects or files whenever necessary. The recovered data can then be sent to the original or different storage on-premises or in the cloud.
Ransomware Resilience and Protection
Government organizations are prime targets for ransomware attacks. Ensuring data remains protected against cyber threats is vital to prevent data encryption or loss that could disrupt public services and national security. With the solution from NAKIVO, you can make backups in Amazon S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, NAS storage, or Linux-based repositories immutable, thus immune to alteration or deletion by ransomware. Such backups can be used for recovery even when ransomware reaches your organization’s backup storage.
A Budget-Friendly Price Point
Government budgets are often scrutinized. NAKIVO offers affordable pricing and perpetual licenses starting at $229 per socket. This enables government organizations to allocate resources efficiently, ensuring data protection without compromising public service quality.
All-in-One Solution
Government organizations manage diverse data sources, from citizen records to public service databases. NAKIVO’s centralized interface that supports virtual, cloud, physical, and SaaS environments streamline data management, saving time and resources.
Simplified Administration
With a high volume of citizen and government data to protect, reducing administrative time by up to 85% is invaluable. Automation and integration features available in NAKIVO Backup & Replication ensure that data protection processes are efficient, freeing up valuable resources for public service delivery.
Automated Workflows and Simplified Administration
Government organizations often have repetitive data protection needs, such as backing up citizen records and public service databases. In NAKIVO Backup & Replication, you can set up automated workflows to run these tasks, thus ensuring prolonged data security with minimal manual intervention. The workflows can be scheduled and monitored via a single dashboard to effectively control the data protection system and avoid overlaps.
Instant Recovery
Rapid recovery of citizen records, public service databases, and financial records is crucial for maintaining seamless public service delivery. With NAKIVO Backup & Replication, you can reach near-zero RTOs for files and data objects, thus minimizing downtime and ensuring that government professionals can access essential data without delays.
Optimized Performance
For government organizations with terabytes of data to store, optimized performance means reduced storage space consumption and improved backup speed.
Cloud Backups
Multi-platform support is essential for government organizations using diverse systems and public service platforms. Ensuring data consistency is crucial to maintaining the quality and efficiency of public service delivery.
Enhanced Performance
Fast incremental backups and replicas help reduce resource usage, ensuring that public service activities are not hampered by data protection processes.
Recovery Flexibility
Using the solution from NAKIVO, a government organization can recover citizen records, public service databases, and financial records directly from backups. Thus, the backup solution in place ensures that government professionals can access essential information quickly and efficiently.
Additional Cybersecurity
In an era of increasing cyber threats, cybersecurity features are vital to enhance data protection. Apart from immutability, NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides data encryption, two-factor authentication (2FA), and role-based access control (RBAC) to keep government data secure and protected against malicious attacks.
Disaster Recovery
With the complex infrastructures of government organizations, recovering IT environments quickly after global disasters can be challenging. However, the disaster recovery capabilities of the NAKIVO solution enable you to fully automate disaster recovery processes for different emergency cases, ensuring minimal disruption in case of unforeseen events, such as natural disasters or security breaches.
Success Stories: Government Organizations Trust NAKIVO
NAKIVO has been successfully cooperating with such government organizations as the Jefferson County Communications Center Authority (Jeffcom 911), the Town of DeWitt (NY), Municipality of Calahorra (Spain), The Solidarity and Social Investment Fund (FOSIS) in Chile, among others. IT experts say praise the solution’s installation and configuration simplicity, up to 100% backup success rates, deployment flexibility, affordability, and overall efficiency.
Conclusion
NAKIVO Backup & Replication is a good choice for government organizations that offers unmatched data protection, ransomware resilience, affordability, and features specifically addressing the critical government data needs of government organizations. Real success stories prove its effectiveness in safeguarding vital citizen records, public service databases, financial records, and administrative data, ensuring uninterrupted public service delivery and national security. Ensure the safety and continuity of government data in your organization with NAKIVO.
