In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, financial institutions face increasing pressure to maintain constant uptime, ensure data integrity, and meet stringent regulatory requirements. One of the emerging solutions addressing these challenges is the Tertiary Vault—a third-level data backup and disaster recovery (DR) solution designed to provide an extra layer of resilience beyond traditional disaster recovery plans.
What is a Tertiary Vault?
A Tertiary Vault refers to a third-level backup system, specifically created to ensure business continuity during catastrophic failures that may bypass both primary and secondary disaster recovery systems. Unlike traditional DR solutions that involve only two levels of recovery (on-site backups and off-site DR sites), the Tertiary Vault adds an additional, isolated backup that can be used to restore critical data and applications if the primary and secondary options fail.
How is it Implemented?
Implementing a Tertiary Vault typically involves:
- Data Isolation: The vault is air-gapped or logically isolated from the institution’s main network to protect against cyber threats like ransomware or internal sabotage.
- Immutable Storage: Data is stored in a write-once-read-many (WORM) format to ensure that no alterations or deletions can occur post-storage.
- Tiered Access Controls: Access to the Tertiary Vault is highly restricted, often requiring multiple levels of authentication and approval, reducing the likelihood of unauthorized data retrieval or tampering.
- Regular Synchronization: Although isolated, the Tertiary Vault is regularly synchronized with updated snapshots of critical data. This ensures that in the event of a disaster, the institution can recover using the latest versions of critical systems and data.
The vault can either be hosted on-premises or outsourced to specialized third-party service providers with expertise in secure, air-gapped storage solutions.
Difference from Traditional Disaster Recovery
Traditional disaster recovery plans involve two levels of backup: a primary on-site recovery system and a secondary, typically off-site DR system. This system is designed to ensure business continuity in case the primary fails, such as during natural disasters, system failures, or cyberattacks.
However, the Tertiary Vault goes one step further by:
- Adding an isolated third layer of recovery in case both the primary and secondary backups are compromised.
- Mitigating risks from advanced persistent threats (APTs), insider threats, and coordinated attacks that can affect both on-site and off-site DR solutions.
- Offering air-gapped or immutable backup options that are beyond the reach of real-time cyberattacks.
This makes the Tertiary Vault especially vital for financial institutions, where even short periods of downtime can lead to significant financial and reputational damage.
Regulatory Requirements for Financial Institutions
In highly regulated sectors like finance, disaster recovery is not just a best practice—it’s often a legal requirement. Regulatory bodies such as the Federal Reserve, European Banking Authority (EBA), and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) require financial institutions to have robust DR plans that include data redundancy, off-site backups, and regular testing of recovery protocols.
With the rising threat of cybercrime, ransomware, and data breaches, regulators are increasingly looking for:
- Enhanced resilience through isolated, immutable data storage like Tertiary Vaults.
- Comprehensive disaster recovery strategies that include protection from internal threats and coordinated attacks.
- Testing and validation of backup systems to ensure recovery times are within regulatory limits (often hours, not days).
By incorporating a Tertiary Vault into their DR plans, financial institutions can better meet these regulatory requirements and provide additional assurance of business continuity.
Conclusion
As cyber threats evolve and regulatory scrutiny increases, financial institutions need more than just traditional disaster recovery solutions. Tertiary Vaults provide an additional, more secure layer of protection, ensuring that critical data and operations remain safe even in the face of worst-case scenarios. For institutions looking to strengthen their resilience and compliance, implementing a Tertiary Vault may soon become not just a competitive advantage, but a necessity.
Should you need help in implementing a Tertiary Vault project please get in touch!