A cloud backup is a copy of your data and applications stored on a remote “cloud-based” server. The purpose of cloud backup services is to ensure you have a secondary copy of essential data that is stored separately and can be used to restore production data in an emergency. This emergency could be a cyber-attack, a natural disaster, a hardware failure, or an employee error resulting in important company data being deleted accidentally.
While the idea of doing regular data backups is pretty straightforward, it can be complicated to facilitate regular backups in a business environment with hundreds or thousands of systems, applications and users. To overcome this challenge, many companies use cloud backup solutions. These software-based tools and services help automate the process of creating regular cloud backups of your data and files.
Cloud-based server backup solutions should be integral to your organization’s business continuity, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity operations.
Why do you need cloud backup services?
Cloud backups are essential for recovering data and restoring business operations in the event of an unplanned IT incident. These events are generally out of your control, for example.
- A power outage
- A natural disaster
- Ransomware or other cybersecurity events
- Accidental deletion of data
- A disgruntled employee performing a malicious act
Additionally, if you are in a regulated industry, compliance regulations require companies to keep backups of their data, so there is a regulatory need for companies to maintain data backups and demonstrate their ability to recover them effectively. Cloud backup solutions are essential because they keep the data on a separate remote server, which means it won’t be corrupted by the same events that may affect the local network. Cloud backup services are an essential part of improving IT resilience and ensures that your business can remain in operation in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
Benefits
Here are some primary benefits of having a cloud backup:
Secure storage of data and applications: By storing your business data and applications on a cloud-based server, they will be protected from local disturbances and outages affecting the local network.
Rapid Data Recovery: One of the advantages of cloud backups is that data can be backed up to cloud servers continuously, so the image stored in the cloud can be used to restore data quickly if needed.
Seamless Scalability: One of the advantages of cloud storage compared to local storage is that it has flexible storage space. While physical hard drives or tapes have a finite capacity, cloud-based backups can quickly scale up or down based on your needs.
Audit trail and record keeping: Using a cloud-based backup service allows you to keep track of your data backups and keep records for compliance and auditing purposes.
Enterprise-level encryption: Many cloud backup services provide enterprise-level encryption for all stored data. This helps maintain your data’s security while it is stored in the cloud.
Types of cloud backup services?
There are four primary types of cloud backup services that a company would typically need:
Backing up on-premises data to the cloud: These solutions manage on-premises backups and allow you to migrate them to a cloud service. This will enable you to create local backups and push a copy of those backups to the cloud, enabling you to have local backups and different cloud storage backups.
Backing up to a public cloud: This backup service allows you to take your local backup data and upload it to a cloud for safe storage. You would need to use your software to create the backups in this situation. The cloud provider is only providing secure storage.
Backing up data with a service provider: this is when you use a cloud provider’s software or one that integrates with the service provider to create the backups and write that data to a managed data centre.
Cloud-to-Cloud (C2C) Backup: This cloud backup solution allows you to backup copies of your data from one cloud environment to another. This is usually done to improve resilience and reduce dependency on one cloud provider.
Examples of cloud backup services
Here are a few examples of common cloud backup solutions that you might use today without thinking it’s a cloud backup service.
Microsoft OneDrive: For people that use Office365, Microsoft OneDrive is one of the best cloud backup services to integrate into your business. It provides up to 1TB of data per user and integrates easily with Office 365, making it a very popular option for many companies.
Google Drive: This is one of the market’s best free cloud backup services. This can be used from your Gmail account to back up personal and business documents. It’s 100% free up to a certain amount, and you can pay for more storage space as required.
NordLocker: This is one of the best cloud backup services for security-conscious users. It supports some of the most modern and secure encryption algorithms, such as AES256, Argon2 and ECC encryption protocols. NordLocker also begins as a free model for up to 5GB of cloud storage.
DropBox: This is one of the most popular cloud storage options. It offers vast and even unlimited storage options for clients with a significant amount of data they want to store. They are also known for allowing effortless sharing of data between users. Its only drawback is that it’s relatively expensive compared to other options.
Managed backup services from CG Technologies
A managed cloud backup solution from a trusted partner like CG Technologies means you don’t have to worry about data backups as they are being managed for you. Our managed cloud backup service provides small/medium businesses (SMBs) with enterprise-level backup capabilities. Contact us to learn more.
