We've talked about backups here on the A&A Blog in the past. We're a big fan of backups! Unfortunately, far too many organizations are not quite the fans we are here at A&A.
It's perfectly understandable! The A&A Blog is a judgment-free zone. Like a lot of complicated processes and technologies, if you didn't get in on the ground floor, you might find yourself a little lost just a few years down the road. We're happy to help fill in the gaps! One of the easiest places to get started is cloud backups, or online backups as they are also called.
Here are four reasons to get started with cloud backups!
Affordable
Cost is a huge concern when it comes to new business implementations, so we'll talk turkey upfront. The cost of backing up to the cloud is very low. Some vendors will charge a one time set up fee, but that's not a hard and fast rule. After that, the cost can be as low as pennies per gigabyte. Budgeting new expenses can be a big hurdle, especially for small businesses, but if you have to backup from the cloud after a natural disaster or computer failure just once, it will have more than paid for itself. Cloud backups are a low cost insurance policy on your valuable data.
Read More: Getting Started With a Backup Plan For Your Business
Convenient
Next to cost, ease-of-use is another big factor when adopting new technologies. The great thing about backing up to the cloud is that most of the process is automatic. Your vendor can help you make sense of the ins and outs and address any questions you might have, but cloud backups often require very little human intervention. Once you've defined the computers and data to be backed up, you can set a schedule, usually overnight or some other period of inactivity, and the backup application takes care of the rest.
Offsite
If you currently backup data onsite at your business or organization, that's great! Believe it or not, that actually puts you far ahead of the game. Many businesses still don't backup their information at all. However, backing up your data onsite doesn't prevent data loss in the event of a natural disaster or theft or other issues that may plague your local infrastructure. For true redundancy, it's best practice to keep backups offsite, which is exactly the benefit of cloud backups.
Read More: Where is the Cloud? Where's My Stuff?
Secure
Information security is of the utmost importance in the modern age. Any backup plan is better than no backup plan, but one unspoken advantage to backing up to the cloud specifically is security. Odds are your business is not SOC certified. Or maybe you're worried about HIPAA compliance. The value of leveraging a cloud data center is that they can be certified and complaint in ways that you can't or would otherwise be too challenging for your organization. You'll want to be sure any vendor you partner with is on the same page as you before working with them!
As you can tell, there's tremendous value in cloud backups. Given just how inexpensive and easy it is these days, there's little reason to not take advantage of backing up to the cloud. All it takes is one major data loss, and the impact to your business could be catatrophic, not to mention very costly.