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Pros and Cons of Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

Pros and Cons of Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

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One of the biggest potential risks in today’s modern digital world is the risk of losing your data. Whether it is professional or personal, data is a valuable asset. One of the most important steps in ensuring your data is secure is routine data backup. Backing up your data is a great habit to get into as it helps to eliminate the risks of accidental data loss, data breaches, viruses, and even cybercriminals. However, one major issue with data backups is that your devices are constantly accumulating more and more data. Thus, as your data continues to grow, these backups become more taxing and time-consuming, and your devices and software begin to run slower and slower. This is where utilizing continuous data protection becomes a major advantage.

What is continuous data protection and how does it work? What are the benefits of utilizing continuous data protection? And what about the downsides?

Here is a guide on everything you need to know about the pros and cons of continuous data protection.

Continuous Data Protection: What is it?

Continuous data protection, or CDP, is a method of data backup that updates continuously. CDP operates in real-time by updating your data backup anytime you add, edit, or adjust the information on your device. By utilizing continuous data protection you ensure that your data is constantly backed-up at all times. Any time you browse the web, make changes to a document or folder, or create a new file, continuous data protection will save that information to your device. This helps to eliminate many potential risks for data loss.

How does CDP Work?

Continuous data protection software was developed to counteract many of the issues that arose during standard backups. CDP software operates by creating a copy of your device’s data anytime there is a change or update. The software functions continuously in the background of your device, constantly monitoring for changes. The CDP software records and catalogs records of your device multiple times throughout the day at different time intervals. It continues to do so until the last change prior to failure. This means that following device or data failure, users can access the catalog and restore their device to any of the timestamps recorded within.

What are the Benefits of Continuous Data Protection?

  • Data Security – As aforementioned, CDP software functions automatically in the background on your device. Constantly recording and cataloging the data on your device. Using CDP ensures that even if you don’t remember to actively back up your data it won’t disappear in the event of a data breach or device failure.
  • Smaller Back-Up Windows – One of the largest issues with traditional data backups is that as your device accumulates more and more data, the data backup windows begin to become very time-consuming. Because CDP backups occur every few minutes the window of time necessary for completion becomes much smaller and more manageable.
  • Smoother Software Operation – With traditional backups, as data continues to accumulate it can often bog down and slow the operation of your device. CDP software is better able to handle and adjust to this increase in data and allows your device to continue running smoothly.
  • Protection from Viruses and Malware – CDP software also works great for protecting your devices against threats like computer viruses and malware.

What are the Downsides of CDP?

  •  Single Failure Point – One downside of utilizing continuous data protection is that it provides a single failure point. This means that should something happen to corrupt your CDP software, it can impact all of the data stored within. This is why it is generally recommended to practice data backups to storage even when utilizing CDP software.
  • Increased Investment in Disk Storage – As your CDP updates continuously, it requires efficient disk drives to store data externally. This can be somewhat costly depending on how much data you need to store on disks.

Conclusion

Continuous data protection is a valuable tool for ensuring the security of your valuable device data. CDP operates as background software that is constantly monitoring and backing up your data with each update. CDP software stores this data in a catalog of timestamps all the way up to device failure. This means that users can reboot their devices at any number of timestamps and restore their data when needed.

Continuous data protection helps to decrease the time needed during backup windows, as well as help your device to run smoother as data accumulates in the storage. It also provides you with much-needed protection from viruses, malware, and hackers. While CDP can present risk as a single point of failure, performing traditional backups to a secondary location can alleviate almost all risks. All in all, continuous data protection is a valuable security tool for ensuring the security of your device’s data.

 

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