The two must-haves for data resiliency
The series of recent hurricanes in the U.S. have demonstrated just how vital data resiliency is for government agencies. Your constituents expect that their government will always be there for them. They expect that when tragedy hits, citizen services will be kept up and running or at least turned back on quickly. You want to have confidence in your systems’ ability to do so.
Whether it’s a natural disaster or a cyberattack, government agencies need the resiliency to bounce back quickly. So what can you do now to prepare for the worst?
You can start by implementing sound practices in two key areas: geo-redundancy and cybersecurity.
Geo-redundancy
By taking advantage of cloud or hybrid cloud solutions, you can have the flexibility to implement a disaster recovery plan designed specifically for your needs.
Maybe in the near-term you need to keep your primary datacenter on premises. You can still have a back-up datacenter in another region using a hybrid solution. Or, perhaps you’re in the process of migrating all your datacenter services to the cloud, in which case, you’ll want to make sure that you have two geo-redundant datacenters—something we offer with the Microsoft Cloud. If they’re too close together, you risk both being impacted by a natural disaster in your region.
Once you’ve implemented your resilience plan, you’ll want to test it. That way, if you need to make adjustments you can do so and feel confident that if disaster strikes your systems are prepared.
With the cloud, you also have the flexibility to migrate key government service workloads to a datacenter in a safe place when you know a weather event or other natural disaster is coming. This will allow you to stand-up critical citizen services and disaster recovery programs as quickly as possible.
Cybersecurity
When it comes to data resiliency and keeping your government services up and running, cybersecurity is a multi-faceted process that needs to happen day in, day out. Cloud computing, mobile devices, the Internet of Things, and the digitization of information and processes in a hybrid computing environment present new challenges to securing data.
That means the cyberthreat landscape of today requires an ongoing, relentless—and holistic—approach to protecting your data and infrastructure. Many of our government customers are happy to leave it to us to help reduce the burden on them.
Whether it’s through our wide array of compliance certifications and end-to-end security and data protection capabilities, our digital crimes unit, or the more than $1 billion we invest in security research and development each year, we’re constantly working to help government agencies take a holistic approach to protect, detect, and respond to security threats and increasing cybercrime.
Learn more in our cybersecurity blog series.
Together with our vast ecosystem of partners, we’re here to help you proactively plan and prepare for disasters and cyberthreats. That way, your government agency can have the data resiliency you require so your services can be there for your constituents when they need them most.
See how governments around the world are digitally transforming while gaining the resiliency and security they need in the eBook: The Digital Transformation of Government.
