Security in Computing 5th Edition by Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Charles P Pfleeger, Jonathan Margulies

Exercise 20

You discover that your computing system has been infected by a piece of malicious code. You have no idea when the infection occurred. You do have backups performed every week since the system was put into operation but, of course, there have been numerous changes to the system over time. How could you use the backups to construct a “clean” version of your system?

Step 1 of 2

Backups

The term backup is defined as the process of coping all the files and other relevant data so that they can be used at the time of crisis. If no backup of data id performed and some incident or crisis occurs, then, all the important data may get lost which cannot be recovered. Thus, backups are always essential as they help to recover the original data at the time of crisis or when the data is lost.

There are different types of backups that can be performed depending upon the importance of data such as complete backup, selective backup or revolving backup. Complete backup implies taking the data of all the data at regular intervals such as every week or every day. Revolving backup implies every time a new backup of files is taken, the older backup is removed. Lastly, the selective backup is defined as the process of taking backup only of the changed or modified files.