Protecting vital information is critical to your survival—no matter what size or type of business you operate. Recent studies show that 93 percent of organizations that lose data because of a disaster go out of business within two years.
Backing up sensitive data on-premise is good, but in today’s threat landscape, it is not good enough. The cloud is a game changer for backup and disaster recovery.
What is Cloud backup?
Cloud backup is a cloud computing business solution that backs up your system, applications, and data to a cloud-based server in a remote location. Some larger enterprises have the resources and budget to maintain a private cloud infrastructure, but for most businesses migrating your backups to a public cloud service like Microsoft Azure is the way to go. Most companies opt to have their cloud backups managed and supported by a managed IT provider like ANP -- for a flat monthly fee.
What is the advantage to using cloud backup?
Protecting data is difficult, expensive, unreliable, and unmanageable with traditional tape backup methods. Only offsite cloud backups provide the highest level of data protection and redundancy. Here are 7 benefits of using cloud backup solutions for your business:
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Offsite disaster recovery.
To truly protect your backup data, you also must move it offsite. On-premises or local backups can be destroyed in the event of a local disaster, such as a tornado, hurricane, flood, etc. While your offices and systems may be destroyed, data backed up to the cloud will be isolated from that event, ensuring your organization can get up and running again. The cloud provides the geographic distance necessary to keep data safe in the event of a regional disaster.
On the other hand, disk-based cloud server backup uses the cloud to automatically transfer data offsite for disaster recovery. Your backup data is immediately off-premises only minutes after being updated. No matter what type of disaster strikes your organization, you can restore data from moments before the disaster occurred.
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Reasonably priced.
Yes, data backup and disaster recovery is like an insurance policy -- you have it in case you ever need it. This can make it hard to justify large expenditures on backup and disaster recovery solutions, especially when your IT budget is limited. Luckily, cloud-based backup solutions take away the need for spending a large chunk of money upfront on expensive hardware.
Using cloud backup is less expensive than maintaining an on-premises backup system. Your organization does not need to purchase or maintain hardware and software, nor worry about getting approval for a capital purchase. Instead, you pay a subscription fee that is an operational expense item.
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Remote Workforce.
Although some businesses are bringing staff back to the office, many organizations will continue a remote or hybrid work environment indefinitely, significantly expanding the business’s attack surface.
Cloud backup provides the scalable, flexible backup and security solutions required to accommodate many remote endpoints with no additional hardware to purchase, install and maintain.
If you rely on Office 365 to support employee productivity and collaboration, data protection cannot be an afterthought. If you want peace of mind that your Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business files and data are secure and recoverable, cloud backup is the way to go.
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Protection from Ransomware & Other Cyberattacks
As we discussed in a recent webinar, Ransomware is on the rise and not slowing down anytime soon. These attacks are becoming more frequent, more destructive, and more expensive to remediate.
Today, cybercriminals are targeting businesses that they believe are more likely to pay the ransom. And some newer ransomware attacks are going for the backup files, rendering them useless for recovery once the data is encrypted. Cloud backup can eliminate this threat by storing backups separate from the company network so hackers can’t touch them. If your on-premise network is attacked, your off-site backups in the cloud will be safe and available to restore immediately.
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Simplicity.
Cloud backup solutions have made ongoing management and restoration easy. With just a few clicks of the mouse, backed up files can be easily found and restored.
Time is one of the most commonly stated reasons companies aren’t backing up their data. Cloud backup doesn’t require an additional time commitment for you. Computer files are backed up to the cloud automatically and continuously, whenever you’re connected to the Internet.
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Shortage of Specialized IT Experts
According to recent studies conducted by Korn Ferry, U.S. businesses could miss out on $162 billion in revenue annually by 2030 if there isn’t an increase in the number of skilled tech workers.
Additionally, several businesses are cutting budget and requiring businesses to reduce their full-time IT staff until the economy recovers. Those who remain are being asked to figure out how to do more with less and still find time to innovate and keep the business competitive in the market.
For internal IT departments that are spread thin, outsourcing certain workloads like managing your backups to an IT providers, can help. This will free up your IT team to focus on strategic initiatives while leaving your backups to the experts.
For most organizations, backup and disaster recovery strategies are absolutely critical to maintain the health of the business.
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Better data security.
Some may argue that a public cloud backup is not as secure as a local backup. Yet for a small-to-medium-sized business (SMBs) that may not have a cyber security expert on staff, a seasoned cloud provider can provide far superior security.
Which Cloud Backup solution is right for my business?
Cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solutions can support both on-premises and cloud-based IT environments. You might decide, for example, to store only backed up or replicated data in the cloud while keeping some of your IT environment in your office. With this hybrid approach, you still can take advantage of the benefits of the cloud without having to move your entire IT environment to the cloud. In a cloud-to-cloud model, your replicated disaster recovery solution is also located in the cloud, but in a different location to ensure enough physical separation.
How to get started?
At ANP we leverage Microsoft Azure for our cloud-based backup solutions and our team of cloud and security experts manage and support it daily. Contact us today at (215) 572-0111 or at connect@anp.net to get a quote on what it would take to move your data backup solution to the cloud with ANP. We're happy to take a look at your current backup solution and make recommendations based on a budget and timeline that makes sense for your business needs.