Sunday, April 28, 2013

Chapter 14 Ensuring Integrity and Availability


This chapter is all about safeguarding your data and protecting your network. It discusses backup and recovery practices and as well as disaster recovery and contingency plans. It begins with two important concepts Integrity and availability. That is to say integrity refers to the soundness of a network’s programs, data, services, devices, and connections. Availability refers to how consistent and reliably a file or system can be accessed by authorized personnel. 

The text goes into discourse about Malware and the various types and characteristics. It follows-up with malware protection, anti-malware software and polices. If malware is unchecked it will wreak havoc on the system.

Safeguarding against malware is important; however another key component in maintaining the availability and integrity of data is fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is the capacity for a system to continue performing despite an unexpected software or hardware failure. Examples of potential areas that need to be monitored are Environment, Power, and Network design. Maintaining these areas is key in keeping fault tolerance to a minimum.

It is also important to have a backup strategy and storage plan. It could entail optical media, tape backups, external disk backup or network backups. This would be a good time to lay out a disaster recovery plan along with any contingencies. 

No comments:

Post a Comment