Data protection is the process of safeguarding important data from corruption, compromise or loss and providing the capability to restore the data to a functional state should something happen to render the data inaccessible or unusable.

Data protection assures that data is not corrupted, is accessible for authorized purposes only, and is in compliance with applicable legal or regulatory requirements. Protected data should be available when needed and usable for its intended purpose.

The scope of data protection, however, goes beyond the notion of data availability and usability to cover areas such as data immutability, preservation, and deletion/destruction.

Roughly speaking, data protection spans three broad categories, namely, traditional data protection (such as backup and restore copies), data security, and data privacy as shown in the Figure below. The processes and technologies used to protect and secure data can be considered as data protection mechanisms and business practices to achieve the overall goal of continual availability, and immutability, of critical business data.