Cloud-based solutions are being adopted by businesses like yours in order to keep up with the rapidly ever-changing technological landscape–and it’s not going to slow down. A study by Gartner indicates that cloud adoption will only increase. Many organizations, however, are not aware of the critical importance of having a backup for their cloud-based data: without a backup solution of one kind or another, data recovery can be very difficult, if not outright impossible.
Here’s a scenario you don’t want to be in: an employee accidentally deletes your company data and you attempt to retrieve it from the cloud, but realize it hadn’t been backed up in a month. Sad sad day. The road to recovery is long and arduous, if not downright impossible.
Moral of the story? Use a good backup and use it frequently with cloud-based solutions.
Four Cloud Backup Benefits
Though there are a variety of benefits from cloud backup, the all important top four are the following.
Security
The importance of data security cannot be more emphasized than with the following story.
Jim was an accountant at an undisclosed company. His organization didn’t have security on their cloud data, meaning they had no cloud backup. What is cloud backup? It is the storage of data in a secure, off-site location. When Jim’s account was hacked, his company’s data was stolen and all the funds of the organization were funneled into the hacker’s offshore account. Jim ended up in the soup line at a local shelter and the hacker made off with a ton of cash.
Had Jim’s organization been updating their cloud-based backups, their data would have been stored securely and remotely, outside of Jim’s office’s network. A cloud backup is usually encrypted and stays that way in the off-site location where it is stored.
One way to think of “the cloud” is to think of it as “another computer,” where data is stored. The great security feature of the cloud is twofold: 1) it is not stored locally, where it might be accessible to ill-willed employees or cybercriminals wanting to implement ransomware; and 2) it is encrypted, so that it is essentially a garbled mess of nonsense to anyone who might try and access it without appropriate or approved access.
Recoverability
Another important aspect of cloud backup is recoverability. If Jim (his story is above) and his organization had been backing up their data on the cloud with cloud backup, they could have readily and easily recovered most, if not all, of their data. This keeps your business running smoothly with little, if any, interruption, avoiding costly downtime and lost productivity.
Again, you can think of “the cloud” as “another computer,” where your data is stored. As mentioned above, cloud backup solutions are such that data is stored elsewhere and is encrypted. Hence, it stands to reason, if you have a backup on another “computer” in another location (and you’re updating your backups with regular frequency), then, if you should lose or delete data, you will be able to recover it from that other “computer” in the other location.
Manageability
In addition to these two features of cloud backup is the manageability of cloud backup. The good news: cloud backup is highly manageable. Just how? In this way: you can easily manage cloud backups remotely, saving you a ton of time. And time is money, is it not?
But what does it mean that cloud backup is manageable? Here’s another story to illustrate the point.
Tammy ran her own company and had transitioned to a cloud-based platform. Having made such a transition, she was able to improve productivity of herself and her team, as the cloud-based platform allowed them to centrally operate and monitor their backup system from a single location. This allowed them to quickly and easily see the status of their backups and identify any issues that need attention immediately. It also allowed them to set up automatic backups, giving them the flexibility to restore whatever data they needed at a given time.
Scalability
The fourth excellent attribute of cloud backup is scalability. As your organization grows, so does the data it produces.
With Tammy’s organization, the use of cloud backup allowed them to easily manage what could have quickly become unmanageable. The influx and increase of data without a scalable cloud-based solution could be tantamount to having thousands of hardcopy files in physical folders in hundreds of physical file cabinets: the manageability of that would be near impossible and a time-suck. Tammy’s organization, however, was able to utilize the scalability of the cloud-based backup solution.
With the increased need for storage of data comes the increased need for backup solutions. If you’re dependent upon onsite backup systems, you’ll be ever investing in hardware that you’ll quickly outgrow. With cloud backup, though, you can scale up, as you need.
We are Cloud Experts!
Do you have cloud-based backup solutions? If not, you need them. If you do, you need us to help you support you with them. We will keep you compliant and secure as well as ensure that your solution or solutions are functioning properly. Contact us today to schedule a free no-obligation consultation!
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