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Regular Backups OLD

Regular Backups

What are Regular Backups and how do they work?

A backup is a process by which important data, software, and configuration settings are stored for the purpose of recovering from an unplanned event such as server failure, accidental deletion of a file, or malicious activity. 

Regular backups should be performed in a coordinated and resilient manner in accordance with ‘best practice’ business continuity requirements.

Backups should be protected in a manner in which they cannot be tampered with, as it is not uncommon for hackers to search an organisation’s network for backups.

In addition to backing up an organisation’s data, it is also important to test the restoration of systems, software, and important data from backups. Testing should be in a coordinated manner as part of business continuity or disaster recovery exercises.

Windows computer security
Woman using a computer

Why are Regular Backups important?

In the event that your organisation is compromised by a hacker, it is vitally important to be able to recover from ransomware or a destructive hack.

It is therefore imperative that your organisation’s data is backed up and that it can be restored when required.

ACSC recommends that backups of important data, software, and configuration settings are performed and retained in a coordinated and resilient manner in accordance with business continuity requirements.

This control should also be extended to protect the backups from unauthorised individuals.

Introspectus Key Features

What's the solution?

Introspectus helps organisations maintain control over the IT security of their business environment by testing the effectiveness of their backups on all endpoints daily.

Introspectus confirms the effectiveness of an organisation’s backups by checking that each mapped drive on server infrastructure is regularly backed up. This information is analysed and a maturity score is produced against ACSC’s Essential Eight Maturity Model, confirming that:

  • Servers are backed up on a regular schedule.
  • All drives on the server are backed up and identify any endpoints where the policies have not been implemented.
Introspectus Assessor Application Control

How Introspectus Helps

Each agent compares the current patch list against what is actually installed on its device. Any gap between what has been released and what is deployed is immediately surfaced. Critically, Introspectus pays particular attention to the timing of patch deployment not just whether a patch is present, but when it was applied.

This temporal dimension is central to Essential Eight compliance, where the difference between a patch applied on day two versus day thirty can mean the difference between maturity levels, and between an environment that was protected and one that was exposed.

This combination of daily patch intelligence, severity-based filtering, agent-level validation, and deployment timing analysis gives organisations a real-time, evidence-based view of their operating system patch posture mapped directly to the ISM controls applicable to the Essential Eight patch operating systems strategy.

The Challenge with Patch Operating Systems

The visibility gap here is particularly consequential. A patch may be approved and scheduled, yet never successfully applied due to a failed deployment, a device that was offline during the maintenance window, a reboot that was deferred, or a system that exists outside managed channels entirely.

Organisations that rely solely on deployment tooling to confirm patch status are measuring intent, not reality. The ACSC is explicit on this point: organisations need to confirm patches have been applied successfully, not merely that they were dispatched.

Patch Operating Systems Overview

Within the Essential Eight framework, patching operating systems is a core and non-negotiable control. The ACSC sets clear expectations: patches for internet-facing infrastructure must be applied within 48 hours when identified as critical or where working exploits exist, and within two weeks for standard releases.

Patches for workstations, servers, and network devices must be applied within one month, with tighter timeframes applying in high-threat environments. Critically, the ACSC also mandates that vulnerability scanning occurs at least daily for internet-facing systems and at least fortnightly for workstations and non-internet-facing infrastructure not to replace patching, but to confirm it has actually occurred.

How Introspectus Works

From this inventory, Introspectus performs targeted web intelligence gathering. For each application identified, the platform locates the top five authoritative sources of patch and release information vendor security advisories, release notes, and vulnerability databases and retrieves that content into a central repository.

Aletheia, Introspectus’s AI analysis agent, then reads and analyses this content to extract the intelligence that matters for application patching: the latest available version, whether a release addresses a security vulnerability, the severity of that vulnerability, and all information relevant to the Essential Eight application patching requirements. This structured intelligence is mapped directly to the applicable ISM controls, producing defensible, audit-ready evidence of an organisation’s application patch compliance posture.

The Challenge with Patch Applications

A critical and frequently overlooked problem is the visibility gap. Organisations may believe their applications are current when, in reality, patches have silently failed, devices have missed deployment windows, or software has been installed outside of managed channels entirely.

Without continuous inspection at the endpoint level, these gaps go undetected until an audit or, worse, a breach.

Patch Applications Overview

Within the Essential Eight standard, patching applications is a dedicated and non-negotiable control. The ACSC specifies clear timeframes: critical vulnerabilities in internet-facing services must be addressed within 48 hours, commonly used applications such as office productivity suites, web browsers, email clients and PDF software must be patched within two weeks of release, and all other applications within one month.

For organisations in high-threat environments, the bar is higher still. Meeting these requirements consistently across hundreds of distinct applications deployed across thousands of endpoints is not achievable through manual effort alone.