Security, Compliance, and Governance in Data Protection
Domain 8 tests security, compliance, and governance controls in protection environments: encryption, access, immutability, audit, and legal retention. Expect questions on how to protect backups from ransomware and how to prove compliance.
Core rules
- Confidentiality requires encryption in transit and at rest. Data Domain supports data-at-rest encryption with internal or external key management. Losing the key loses the data; key management is part of the design.
- Access control uses role-based access control, directory integration, least privilege, and multifactor authentication for administrative access. Separate backup administrators from security administrators where possible.
- Immutability prevents deletion or modification before expiry. Data Domain retention lock has governance and compliance modes. Compliance mode cannot be shortened or bypassed, even by an administrator.
- Air gap means a physically or logically isolated copy that cannot be reached from the production network. A firewall rule alone is not an air gap.
- Cyber Recovery combines an isolated vault, automated copy, and CyberSense analytics to detect signs of corruption. Recovery must be tested.
- Audit logging records administrative actions, restores, policy changes, and logins. Legal hold preserves data beyond normal retention for litigation or investigation.
- Compliance regimes such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and SOX impose retention, privacy, and access requirements. Governance defines who can change retention and how exceptions are approved.
Worked example
A retailer must recover from ransomware within 24 hours and prove backups were not altered. The design writes daily backups to DD with retention lock in compliance mode for 60 days, replicates to a second site, and copies a subset to a Cyber Recovery vault with an air gap. CyberSense scans the vault and flags abnormal encryption. Access uses AD groups with least privilege and MFA. The runbook includes a clean-room restore and validation. Audit logs are exported to a SIEM. The design meets the RTO because the vault copy is restorable, not merely isolated.
Traps that cost marks
- Encrypting data but not managing keys.
- Treating a firewall as an air gap.
- Assuming retention lock governance mode is tamper-proof.
- Giving backup administrators production domain admin rights.
- Confusing compliance with security.
- Keeping audit logs only on the protected system.