Air Gap

Understanding the Concept of Air Gap

The concept of “air gap” refers to a security measure that ensures the protection of data from infection or corruption by making it inaccessible. In the IT industry, this is commonly achieved by creating a duplicate copy of production data on a secondary storage system that is offline and not connected to any production or public networks. By maintaining this gap, the additional data copy remains safeguarded from attacks and corruption.

Organizations often rely on air gap data as a final backup option. It acts as an extra layer of protection, complementing existing backup, recovery, and disaster recovery strategies. Additionally, in the event of a major attack, the air gap allows for quick recovery.

However, it is important to note that implementing an air gap strategy can come with higher costs. Many vendors encourage customers to invest in separate hardware for production and the air gap, resulting in increased expenses. This has limited the adoption of traditional hardware air gap strategies.

There are various types of air gaps, including array-based air gaps, backup-based air gaps, and object-based air gaps.