A Glossary of Essential Terms: Encrypted Backup & Recovery for HR Professionals
In today’s data-driven HR landscape, protecting sensitive employee information isn’t just a best practice—it’s a legal and ethical imperative. From payroll details to performance reviews, the data HR manages is a prime target for cyber threats. Understanding the core concepts of encrypted backup and recovery is no longer optional; it’s fundamental to ensuring compliance, maintaining trust, and safeguarding your organization’s most valuable asset: its people. This glossary demystifies key terminology, providing HR and recruiting leaders with the knowledge needed to navigate data security with confidence and integrate robust protection into their automated HR processes.
Encryption
Encryption is the process of converting information or data into a code, preventing unauthorized access. In the HR context, this means transforming sensitive employee data—like Social Security numbers, bank details, or health information—into an unreadable format. This is crucial for protecting data both when it’s stored and when it’s transmitted between systems (e.g., from an applicant tracking system to a payroll platform). Properly implemented encryption is a cornerstone of compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA, ensuring that even if data is breached, it remains unintelligible and unusable to unauthorized parties. Automation platforms can be configured to ensure data is encrypted before being stored or moved.
Data at Rest
Data at rest refers to data that is stored physically in any digital format—on hard drives, servers, databases, or cloud storage. For HR, this includes applicant resumes in an ATS, employee records in an HRIS, background check results, and performance reviews stored on company servers or cloud drives. Securing data at rest is vital because this is often where data resides for extended periods. Encryption for data at rest ensures that even if a database or server is compromised, the stored information remains protected from being read or used by unauthorized individuals. Strong encryption here is a non-negotiable for HR data security.
Data in Transit
Data in transit, or data in motion, refers to data actively moving from one location to another across a network, such as the internet or a private network. This includes sending emails, accessing cloud-based HR applications, transmitting payroll information to a processing service, or updating employee profiles between integrated systems. Protecting data in transit is critical to prevent interception and eavesdropping during transmission. Technologies like Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) are used to encrypt data packets as they travel, ensuring that confidential HR communications and data transfers remain secure from external threats. Automating secure API calls is key here.
Zero-Knowledge Encryption
Zero-knowledge encryption is an advanced form of encryption where the service provider encrypting the data holds no key to decrypt it. Only the user or data owner possesses the decryption key. This provides the highest level of privacy and security because not even the service provider can access the unencrypted data, making it impossible for them to disclose it to third parties or government requests. For HR, this is particularly valuable for highly sensitive information, such as medical records or personal identifiers, as it significantly reduces the risk of internal breaches or unauthorized access by the cloud provider itself. It’s the gold standard for confidentiality.
Symmetric Encryption
Symmetric encryption uses a single, shared secret key for both encrypting and decrypting data. It’s generally faster and less computationally intensive than asymmetric encryption, making it suitable for encrypting large volumes of data. In an HR context, symmetric encryption might be used to secure large backups of employee records before they are stored off-site or in the cloud. The challenge lies in securely sharing the key between parties; if the key is compromised, the entire dataset is vulnerable. Examples include AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), commonly used for securing stored files and databases containing HR information.
Asymmetric Encryption (Public Key Encryption)
Asymmetric encryption, also known as public key encryption, uses a pair of mathematically linked keys: a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption. The public key can be freely shared, while the private key must be kept secret. This method is slower but offers superior security for key exchange and authentication. HR applications often use asymmetric encryption for secure communication channels, digital signatures on contracts (e.g., offer letters), and secure key exchange for symmetric encryption. It ensures that only the intended recipient with the corresponding private key can decrypt the message or verify the sender’s identity.
Backup
A backup is a copy of data taken and stored in a separate location to protect against data loss. For HR, regular backups of applicant tracking systems, HRIS databases, payroll records, and employee documents are essential for business continuity and disaster recovery. Data loss can occur due to hardware failure, cyberattacks (like ransomware), human error, or natural disasters. Implementing an automated, consistent backup strategy ensures that HR operations can quickly recover critical data, minimize downtime, and avoid severe disruptions to hiring, onboarding, and payroll processes. This prevents significant operational and reputational damage.
Immutable Backup
An immutable backup is a data backup that cannot be altered, overwritten, or deleted for a specified period, regardless of user permissions or system-level access. This “write once, read many” approach provides an incredibly strong defense against ransomware attacks, accidental deletion, and malicious insiders, as the original backup remains untouched. For HR, immutable backups are vital for compliance with data retention policies and ensuring that critical employee records, financial data, and audit trails are preserved exactly as they were at the time of backup. It’s a key component of a robust disaster recovery strategy, especially against sophisticated cyber threats.
Full Backup
A full backup copies all selected data every time the backup process runs. While it provides the simplest and fastest recovery option because all data is in one place, it consumes the most storage space and takes the longest to complete. For HR, a full backup might be performed weekly or monthly for an entire HRIS database, providing a complete snapshot of all employee records, applications, and related data at that specific point in time. It’s the most comprehensive type of backup, serving as a reliable baseline for recovery efforts, especially after major system changes or at regular intervals.
Incremental Backup
An incremental backup only copies data that has changed since the last backup of any type (full or incremental). This method is highly efficient in terms of storage space and backup time, as it only transfers new or modified files. For HR, this could mean daily incremental backups of employee document folders or applicant updates in an ATS, after an initial full backup. While efficient, recovery requires restoring the last full backup first, followed by all subsequent incremental backups in the correct sequence, which can be more complex and time-consuming than a full backup recovery.
Disaster Recovery (DR)
Disaster Recovery (DR) is a comprehensive plan and set of procedures designed to enable an organization to quickly resume critical business operations after a disruptive event, such as a natural disaster, cyberattack, or major system failure. For HR, a DR plan would outline how to restore access to HRIS, payroll systems, applicant data, and employee communication channels to minimize the impact on hiring, employee support, and regulatory compliance. It encompasses data backups, alternative work locations, and clearly defined roles and responsibilities to ensure the HR function can continue serving the business and its employees during a crisis.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) defines the maximum acceptable amount of data an organization can afford to lose following a disaster. It’s essentially how “fresh” the recovered data needs to be. For HR, a low RPO (e.g., a few hours) means that very little data can be lost, requiring frequent backups—perhaps every few hours—for critical systems like payroll or timekeeping. A higher RPO (e.g., 24 hours) might be acceptable for less frequently updated data. Determining the RPO for different HR systems helps in designing appropriate backup frequencies and strategies to balance data protection with operational realities and cost.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) specifies the maximum acceptable length of time that an application or system can be down after a disaster before it starts to cause significant damage to the business. For HR, a low RTO (e.g., 2-4 hours) means that critical systems like applicant tracking or core HRIS must be operational very quickly to avoid disruption to hiring, onboarding, or employee support. A higher RTO (e.g., 24-48 hours) might be acceptable for less critical HR applications. RTO helps HR leaders define the urgency for restoring different systems and guides the investment in redundant infrastructure and rapid recovery solutions.
Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a holistic strategy that outlines how an organization will maintain essential functions during and after a significant disruption. Unlike a DR plan which focuses on IT systems, a BCP encompasses all aspects of the business, including human resources, facilities, communications, and supply chains. For HR, a BCP details how employees will be notified, where they will work if offices are inaccessible, how payroll will continue, and how critical HR services will be delivered to ensure employee welfare and sustained operations. It’s about keeping the “people” part of the business running, even in a crisis.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a set of strategies, tools, and processes designed to ensure that sensitive data is not lost, misused, or accessed by unauthorized users. DLP systems monitor and control data movement across networks, endpoints, and cloud applications. For HR, DLP is crucial for protecting PII (Personally Identifiable Information), financial data, and confidential company information. It can prevent employees from accidentally or maliciously sharing sensitive employee data outside the organization, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations and reducing the risk of costly data breaches. DLP can be integrated into automation workflows to flag unusual data transfers.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Fortify Your Keap & High Level CRM: Encrypted Backups for HR Data Security & Compliance
