Securing VM Image Backups for Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

The Challenge	The IT organization within a software company performs weekly backups of production servers for rotation to off-site and cold-site storage. Because the database is located on a different system, the server does not change daily. The company’s security policy requires that the VM image be AES encrypted with a digital certificate.
The Need	The IT organization needs to securely manage weekly backups for production application servers running ESX Server with approximately 25 VM images running both Windows 2008 and RHEL 6 operating systems.
The Solution	Shell scripts schedule calls to SecureZIP for Windows Server and SecureZIP for Linux Server to compress and encrypt the data. The images are encrypted using the AES 256-bit algorithm and the designated IT digital certificate. Each of the compressed and encrypted images are then transferred to the appropriate NAS device, and copied to an external drive for off-site storage.
The Result	With the implementation of SecureZIP, the weekly backups are performed within the designated timeframe to transfer the data to the NAS device, saving storage space and cost, and, most importantly, are complying with the organization’s security standards.