Cloud Backup
Table of Contents
What is cloud backup?
Cloud backup is the process of utilizing either a public or private cloud as the destination for storing a backup copy of data offsite, often for disaster recovery purposes.
How does cloud backup work?
Cloud backup often involves utilizing a hosted cloud resource and services to store the data offsite, usually through a subscription service or recurring fee based on the amount of data stored, computational power, duration, network bandwidth, number of users, and other options. A backup server is often needed not only on the on-premises side, but having a backup server in the cloud as well.
What types of cloud backups are there?
There are several variations of cloud backup.
Public cloud backup
Public cloud backups involve utilizing a third-party for their hosted cloud resources and services at their managed data center.
Private cloud backup
Private cloud backups involve utilizing an organization’s private cloud as the backup target where the managed data center resides separately from the main site.
Cloud to cloud backup
Cloud to cloud backup is the process of backing up data already stored primarily on the cloud to another remote cloud. The primary data on the cloud is usually a part of a SaaS based offering or data leveraging the cloud for primary storage.
What are the advantages of cloud backups?
There are multiple advantages for cloud backups. Primarily, cloud backups provide for safe backups as a remote copy of data by providing offsite data protection and multiple copies of data.
By providing a remote copy or offsite copy in the cloud, this helps with regulatory compliance. New EU regulations such as DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) for financial institutions have enforced new laws for organizations to be more vigilant in terms of their security measures. The new ruling includes enforcing financial institutions in the EU to ensure one copy of data is remote from the source. Companies are also now leveraging cybersecurity insurance to protect their assets, and a part of the qualification process for obtaining the cybersecurity insurance is ensuring you have a copy of data offsite.
Another advantage of backups to the cloud include scalability. As data continues to grow, keeping up with a secondary copy can be daunting. Most cloud backup offerings through a service often include cost cutting measures such as deduplication to keep secondary storage costs and network bandwidth down.
Backups are generally more secure when backing up to the cloud, because the infrastructure is often separate from the corporate network with advanced ransomware protection such as immutable backups. Ransomware attacks are becoming more prevalent throughout organizations.
Finally, oftentimes the usage of service providers to help with backing up to the cloud make management of backups much simpler and can also be more cost effective.