Securing Windows NT/2000 Servers for the Internet

Types of Backups

It’s important to back up data frequently. Decide what kind of backup schedule is suitable for your environment. Before deciding what’s best for your site, consider what’s more important: to have a simple and fast restore procedure, or to perform backups quickly.

Making a Golden Image

The first thing to do is make a golden image of your system. A golden image is a full system backup^[43] made before the system is connected to the public network. This image can be used for recovery, but it can also be used as a reference if the system is compromised in any way.

Performing a Full System Backup

A full system backup is a backup of everything on a system: the operating system, the application executables, and the application data. Always perform a full system backup both before and after any major change takes place—for example, when applying a new service pack.

If the main objective of your backup strategy is to restore a system as quickly as possible, you need to schedule full system backups as often as possible.

Performing Incremental Backup

“Yes, Of Course We Do Backups...”

One of my former clients had a minor fire in their computer center. A power supply in one of their systems had caught on fire. Although the fire was put out automatically in a couple of minutes, the machine was badly damaged. They moved the hard drives to another system to try to read them, but they were dead.

Fortunately, the organization had backed up the system every night, so they’d only lose about ...