What is Port 443 and Why It is Imperative to Your DR Plan
Heard of the phrase ‘the show must go on’? While it is most often used in the entertainment industry, it stands true for the business world as well. If there is one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is that anything can happen at any time. Who would have thought that we would be confined to our homes for nine months straight (and counting) in 2020! It is hence vital that we prepare our business for all exigencies.
A disaster recovery plan is a key that ensures businesses remain uninterrupted no matter what the situation and port 443 is an important cog in the process.
What is port 443?
So what is port 443? Port 443 is a virtual port that computers use to divert network traffic. Billions of people across the globe use it every single day. Any web search you make, your computer connects with a server that hosts that information and fetches it for you. This connection is made via a port – either HTTPS or HTTP port. You would have seen these precursors on web addresses. They depict which port is being used.
It is essential to know the difference between the two. HTTPS is secure and is on port 443, while HTTP is unsecured and available on port 80. Information that travels on the port 443 is encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or its new version, Transport Layer Security (TLS) and hence safer. The TLS 1.2 is the latest version which has fixed several recent vulnerabilities.
Using HTTPS also helps minimize a Ransomware attack by identifying open ports and then blocking access with a firewall. It is highly advisable to access and transact on sites with HTTPS to protect yourself from malicious elements as it prevents your personal information, passwords, customer data, and business-critical data from being intercepted and stolen.
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Why is it important for your disaster recovery plan?
There is no arguing the fact that businesses need an effective disaster recovery plan. The unprecedented situation and uncertainty that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought have only made the case stronger. A crucial part of any disaster recovery plan is backup. Backups have never been more critical to ensure business continuity and resilience.
Unfortunately, they are also the cause of security woes. Poor data backup practices cause a significant number of breaches. Worse, it takes an organization an average of 197 days to detect a data breach, by which time the damage is done. However, there are measures you can adopt to secure your backup data. These include limiting access rights, storing backup at different locations, ensuring network security and encryption, regularly testing, among others.
With more and more employees working from home, your backup security strategy has to be impenetrable. To enable endpoint security, using encrypted port 443 is imperative. Educate your employees so they can distinguish between secure and insecure ports and don’t make mission-critical data vulnerable to hackers.
To ensure your user data is backed up and secure, no matter where the employee is, there are a few things you can do. Ensure all data backup is happening over HTTPS ports. By doing this, data will be encrypted in transit and less likely to be intercepted and misused. Additionally, do not open any network ports on your endpoint. Ensure all business communication happens only via port 443, especially in a remote working environment.
Parablu’s BluVault offering has been designed to help businesses do just this. Parablu’s zero-cost storage for backup option comes with a set of unique features and functionalities. With working from home becoming the new normal, you need a solution that safeguards your business all-the-time, and from anywhere. The solution uses HTTPS along with TLS 1.2 with strong ciphers and works only over port 443. It ensures all communication is encrypted with strong ciphers. Moreover, the service is hosted in SOC-2 and SSAE-16 compliant data centers for your all-round protection.
As Benjamin Franklin said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A precautionary data backup approach is better to safeguard your company’s data.
With newer security threats emerging every day, businesses must use everything in their arsenal to stop cybercriminals. Leveraging port 443 may seem like a simple solution, but it can pay off huge rewards. BluVault’s encryption over port 443 will protect your business communication and backup, ensuring your disaster recovery plan is as robust as it can be.
To learn more about Parablu’s backup solution – BluVault click here
