Data resilience strategies for electromagnetic pulse (EMP) scenarios

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) can rapidly disable electronic infrastructure, including servers, networks, storage media, and backup systems. A critical vulnerability exists when primary systems and backup copies are exposed to the same physical risks.

Data resilience against an EMP depends on storage technology and storage methods. Different media, such as SSDs, HDDs, tape, optical media, and cloud storage, exhibit varying levels of vulnerability. To mitigate the impact of a regional EMP event, companies should implement geographically distributed backups and utilize offline storage to ensure business continuity and data protection.