You’ve heard it over and over again… Back up your data. It’s the only way to protect your business information, financial data and the rest of your digital life from inevitable hardware failure. Running regular backup will greatly reduce your risk for data loss.
But what were to happen if you lost your home or business in a fire, flood or other natural disaster? What if someone were to steal your backup drive? Unfortunately, many people who have backups haven’t thought to keep a copy of their backups offsite or in two separate physical locations. In the past, keeping an offsite backup meant having to double-up on their backup media–multiple copies of hard drives or tapes–which also meant doubling up on cost.
Luckily, there’s an ideal solution that’s been gaining in popularity the last few years–online backups. The idea is simple: Upload your backed up data to the cloud. Should you lose your data locally, you can download it from the cloud.
There are a host of different cloud backup services like Jungle Disk or Backblaze that provide you with an app to install, which will in turn connect to their cloud storage servers and automatically back up your computers and servers. Once you set it up the first time, it runs in the background with very little future interaction, ensuring your offsite backups are always up-to-date and available.
While cloud backups are ideal as a secondary option, they’re not always right for your business’s primary backup solution. The reason why is bandwidth. Whenever you need to restore lost data, you have to download it to your computer. When recovering several gigabytes or more, that restoration process could take some time… Maybe even days. That’s why we typically recommend keeping a local backup in addition to using a cloud backup solution.
It’s imperative to pay close attention when it comes to your business’s data reliability, availability and security. We at OAC Technology, a Minneapolis-based IT company, can assess your backup needs and provide a customized solution that’s right for your company. Contact us today for a free consultation.
