How to ensure Data Sovereignty while backing up data?

Privacy is in the news.  Be it the NSA tussling with Apple on encryption, or GDPR in the EU – the battle between the “rights of the individual” vs “nation-state security” continues to smoulder.  While some nations are continuing to pass laws that strengthen their control over data, there are others that are following the lead of GDPR and passing laws that prioritize the privacy of the individual.  The net result is that enterprises are now constantly under the gun to stay compliant with privacy requirements under new laws in different nations.

A key aspect of nations trying to preserve the privacy of citizens is Data Sovereignty. It broadly includes considerations around where data is processed and stored and dictates that the data collection or processing must remain within regulatorily-defined geographical borders.

Data backups and data sovereignty

In the current climate, where many vendors provide backup as a cloud service – also called BaaS (Backup as a Service), it has become increasingly important that geographies in which backups are processed and eventually routed to, be chosen with awareness of where they’re located. Enterprises today expect to be able to specify, monitor, and manage backed-up data based on geographical locations. They demand this, not only for visibility into where their data is traveling or how it is getting stored, but also to be able to ensure compliance with regulations and local laws.

Parablu’s BluVault and Data Sovereignty

Parablu’s BluVault offers a set of features that help enterprises easily comply with data sovereignty needs.

1. Freedom to choose cloud providers

BluVault being a cloud-agnostic backup solution, offers enterprises the freedom to choose from an array of cloud providers and storage targets. Support for a wide range of cloud and storage providers opens up the possibility for enterprises to choose data centers at preferred geographical locations that enables them to be compliant with data sovereignty rules.

2. Worldwide presence

BluVault is also available in the form of a fully managed hosted SaaS offering. As BaaS (Backup as a Service). With presence in all major continents and countries, as well as the ability to use OneDrive or Google Drive as a storage target – BluVault is able to satisfy data sovereignty needs for almost any customer globally.

3. Backup Tethering

With BluVault, it is easy to ‘tether’ user devices to a certain backup server or a set of backup servers for data sovereignty reasons. For example, a user in Germany can be configured via policy to only route their backups to backup gateways located in Germany.

Read on to see how to enable Backup Tethering using BluVault.

How to specify preferred backup servers in BluVault

You can follow the steps mentioned below to specify a preferred backup server(s) in BluVault:

1. Login to the Parablu portal

2. On the Parablu Portal home, go to the Policy Management tab

3. On the Policy Management tab, click the Backup Policy option

4. On the Backup Policies page, click Create New Policy to create a new policy

5. Or use the Edit option to edit an existing policy

6. On the Policies Management page, go to the Advanced tab and scroll down to the Preferred BluKrypt Hostnames field.

7. Click the Preferred BluKrypt Hostnames dropdown menu and select the desired hostname.

Note: The selected hostname must belong to the server in the preferred geographical location.

8. Under the Blukrypt Search Algorithm dropdown, select the Priority option

9. Click the Save button to complete

After successful completion of the steps above, whenever backups are performed to a specified backup storage target whether it is on the cloud or on-premise, the data processing happens at the specified servers under the Preferred BluKrypt Hostnames field.

Explore several other BluVault features that have helped numerous enterprises across the globe to be regulatory compliant. Get in touch with our experts and ask for a callback or write to us at info@parablu.com.