If we could fix one thing for every business in Lufkin and Angelina County, it would be recovery. Nearly everyone has backups. Far fewer have backups that have been restored recently, stored somewhere an attacker cannot reach, and documented well enough for a stressed person to follow at two in the morning. Backup and disaster recovery is the control that turns a company-ending event into a bad afternoon, and it is the control most often assumed rather than tested.
The 3-2-1 rule
The baseline is simple to say and easy to get wrong: keep three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy kept offsite. Three copies means a single failure never takes the last good version. Two media means a fault in one storage type does not corrupt them all. One offsite copy means a fire, a flood, or a theft at your building is survivable.
Offline, encrypted, and tested
The modern addition to that rule is the word offline. CISA, #StopRansomware Guide recommends maintaining offline, encrypted backups and regularly testing the availability and integrity of those backups, precisely because most ransomware actively searches for and deletes or encrypts any backup it can reach over the network. A backup on the same network as the machine it protects is not a backup; it is a second victim. Equally important is the test. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan, which is why we verify restores on a schedule rather than waiting for the real emergency to find out.
For a Lufkin clinic, recovery is the law
Healthcare organizations do not get to treat this as optional. The HIPAA Security Rule requires a contingency plan that includes a data backup plan and a disaster recovery plan for systems holding electronic protected health information. And if a ransomware event exfiltrates sensitive personal information, Texas law requires a business to notify affected residents no later than the 60th day after it determines the breach occurred, and to notify the Texas Attorney General when at least 250 Texas residents are affected. Good backups both satisfy the contingency requirement and shorten the outage that follows an incident.
Tested restore, not hopeful restore
We run 3-2-1 as an operating practice for Lufkin and Angelina County businesses: live, offsite, and cross-site copies, kept offline where it counts, with restores tested regularly and documented so they can be followed under pressure. It is part of our managed IT work, and it is the first thing our incident response team reaches for when prevention was not enough. Timber, manufacturing, healthcare, and the trades all share the same reality here: being down is expensive and help is not next door, so the recovery plan has to be something we operate, not something you hope works.
Questions
Do you provide backup and disaster recovery for Lufkin, TX businesses?
Yes. We run 3-2-1 backups for Lufkin and Angelina County businesses: three copies, two kinds of storage, one offsite, kept offline where it counts, with restores tested on a schedule. For clinics we align this with the data backup and disaster recovery plan the HIPAA Security Rule requires.
What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?
Keep three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy offsite. CISA adds that backups should be kept offline and encrypted and tested regularly, because ransomware hunts for and deletes any backup it can reach over the network.
Does a ransomware attack trigger a breach report in Texas?
It can. If sensitive personal information is exfiltrated, Texas law requires notifying affected residents no later than the 60th day after the breach is determined, and notifying the Texas Attorney General when at least 250 Texans are affected. Tested, offline backups shorten the outage and support the response. Call (903) 376-3747.