Disaster Recovery for Cloud Computing: Is Public Internet Putting Enterprises at Risk?

Chris Hunsaker, Senior Director Product Technology Strategy

What Is Disaster Recovery?

Disaster recovery is a compilation of formal documentation created by a business including policies, tools, and processes to use in order to recover or continue operations of critical IT infrastructure, software, and systems after unplanned incidents such as natural or human-made disaster.

What Is Cloud Disaster Recovery (cloud DR)?

Cloud disaster recovery (cloud DR) is very similar to traditional disaster recovery plans however, with the intention of backing up data, applications and resources to public or private cloud or dedicated service providers. When a disaster occurs, the affected data, applications and other resources can be restored to the local data center - or a cloud provider -- to resume normal operation for the enterprise.

The goal of cloud DR is the same as traditional DR, which is to protect valuable business resources and ensure important data can be accessed and recovered seamlessly in order to continue normal business operations.

An important aspect of cloud computing is having a disaster recovery plan to restore critical systems, data, and applications when a business-impacting event occurs.

One of the most common disaster recovery solutions is using public internet to connect to the cloud. However, relying on this method can pose significant risks to the enterprise.

In this blog post, we will discuss the risks of using public internet connectivity to the cloud for disaster recovery, and the benefits of using private connections as part of a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy.

Are you comfortable with the ramifications of downtime?

When enterprises rely on the public internet for disaster recovery, they risk significant downtime in the event of an outage or cyber-attack. Are you comfortable with the ramifications of downtime?

Ask yourself, what would happen if your business was down for five minutes in the middle of the day? What about 30? Can you calculate the impact on:

• Revenue?
• Customer experience?
• How downtime could harm your reputation?

Unfortunately, some companies have experienced the need for more reliable disaster recovery firsthand. Public internet issues can disrupt access to cloud services and applications, which could lead to significant financial losses for enterprises. Outages can also disrupt access to popular websites and applications.

The risks of public internet connectivity for disaster recovery

The internet is so useful and ubiquitous that many organizations take it for granted. It is the default way most public-facing applications are built. People assume that it is reliable and secure, and logically start using it for disaster recovery purposes.

Let’s explore the risks of using public internet connectivity for disaster recovery connectivity on these two primary issues:

1. Reliability
2. Security

Reliability: public internet has outages

The internet has always been a best-effort service, linking multiple separate network and service providers without end-to-end service level agreements (SLAs). Traffic can be disrupted at any point in the path between user and destination.

Public internet is subject to numerous risks, including natural disasters, human error, and hardware failure at any point in the network path. Depending on the internet as a best effort solution for critical capabilities can create significant risk for enterprises.

When disaster strikes, enterprises need to be confident that they can quickly and easily access their critical data and applications.

Security: public internet security issues are a big concern

Security is a significant factor when considering public internet connectivity as a solution for disaster recovery.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, route hijacking, cyberattacks, and other security threats can disrupt connectivity, expose vulnerabilities, and lead to downtime and data loss – or even worse, data compromise, and unintentional disclosure.

Check Point Research reported that global cyberattacks increased by 38% in 2022, compared with 2021, indicating security concerns will only become more of an issue with each passing year.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are one solution enterprises can use to protect or encrypt data sent over the internet. The trade-off is that VPNs are often resource-intensive, limited on maximum bandwidth, and can compete against existing business services, leading to slower data transfer rates and network congestion.

For these reasons, VPNs are not the ideal solution for most enterprises for critical capabilities like disaster recovery.

Benefits of private connectivity for disaster recovery

When critical business applications require secure and highly-performant access to the cloud, it's time to think about a solution, like ServiceFabric™ Connect, which provides dedicated private connectivity between enterprise assets and cloud providers for cloud DR.

Private connectivity solutions also offer end-to-end SLAs, customer support, and guarantee high levels of performance and availability. They offer a more secure, reliable, and capable way of connecting supply chains and enabling cloud disaster recovery.

Cloud providers also agree that private connectivity is a better choice for business-critical solutions: in a recent press release, Amazon Web Services emphasized the importance of private connectivity for enterprises to “provide a more consistent network experience than connections over the public internet.”

Private connectivity solutions help ensure that access to disaster recovery plans enable a quick recovery in the event of a disaster, without worrying about downtime, data loss, or security risks.

Private connectivity is part of a holistic disaster recovery strategy

Private connectivity is an important component of a business-grade cloud access design. However, it isn't the only consideration when companies design a holistic cloud DR plan.

Multi-region cloud deployment, multi-cloud deployment, and multi-on ramps to multiple regions are also important concepts that enterprises should consider when designing their Hybrid IT disaster recovery strategies.

Enterprises must remember that a true disaster recovery scenario means testing for a full successful failover, not just backing up data. Disaster recovery testing should simulate real-world scenarios to ensure that the recovery process is efficient and effective.

Disaster recovery testing should include, for example:

• Failover and failback procedures
• Data replication
• Data consistency checks

Enterprises should consider private connectivity for disaster recovery

A comprehensive disaster recovery strategy for cloud computing should include a reliable and secure connectivity solution. Public internet connectivity may seem like a good solution for disaster recovery, but it has many drawbacks that can put a company's security and bottom line at risk.

Private connectivity can be a better solution because it offers improvements to performance and security compared with public internet connectivity. Companies that require always-on and high-performance access to the cloud should consider private connectivity as part of their comprehensive disaster recovery strategy.

Learn More

Digital Realty’s Solution Architects help design solutions that meet the specific needs of enterprises, helping to ensure they are well-prepared for disaster recovery scenarios. Reach out to set up your complimentary consultation.

ServiceFabric™ is a service orchestration platform that seamlessly interconnects workflow participants, applications, clouds, and centers of data exchange. Enable connected data communities with ServiceFabric™ on PlatformDIGITAL®, Digital Realty’s global data center platform. Learn more about ServiceFabric™ and ServiceFabric™ Connect.