Securing backup data against modern threats with AWS Backup

This article examines how AWS Backup addresses modern threats to backup data through advanced security features and defense-in-depth strategies.

• Vault Lock enforces Write-Once, Read-Many (WORM) model in Governance or Compliance mode to prevent accidental or malicious deletion
• Logically air-gapped vaults isolate backup data from source account IAM principals, protecting against ransomware and account compromise
• Multi-party approval requires independent authorization from multiple approvers before critical recovery operations, preventing single-point compromise
• Cross-Region backup copying provides geographic resilience against regional outages and malicious events
• Service Control Policies (SCPs) restrict backup modification by application owners and prevent lifecycle policy tampering
• Restore testing validates integrity of recovery chains and confirms backup data is genuinely recoverable

Organizations should implement defense-in-depth with independent boundaries: Vault Lock for accidental deletion, logically air-gapped vaults for account compromise, and Multi-party approval for guaranteed recovery access independent of identity boundaries.