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CompTIA Security+ 4.2 CompTIA Security+ 3.4
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Rotate, Archive or Dispose?

Media rotation, archiving or disposal? Sort each thing done with backup data or media.

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

Backup media is often reused. With four cassettes swapped out weekly, each comes back every four weeks and the old backup on it is rewritten, so you keep about a month of backups. Rotation disposes of old backups automatically. Archiving is different. The data comes off your systems, but you keep a record of it in case you ever need it, like tax records kept for years. You do not plan to use it again, but it is there. Disposal is getting rid of data or media for good once nothing requires keeping it. A retention plan uses all three: data stays in production for a time, in backup for a time, and sometimes in an archive, before it is disposed of.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+
4.2 Explain the security implications of proper hardware, software, and data asset management.
3.4 Explain the importance of resilience and recovery in security architecture.

Key terms

Backup Media Rotation
A strategy where a fixed set of backup media is reused on a cyclical schedule, automatically overwriting older backups and limiting retention to the length of the rotation cycle.
Archiving
The process of moving data that is no longer actively used to long-term storage for retention purposes, preserving a record that can be retrieved if needed in the future.
Data Disposal
The process of permanently removing data from systems or media in a controlled manner as part of an organization's data retention plan.

Topics

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