When you run an application in the cloud or store data there, you might think that it is protected; however, this is only true to a certain extent. While cloud providers will have some measures in place to safeguard your data, these may be fairly basic and not sophisticated enough to get back an individual deleted file from a particular date, for example.
To stay safe, you should therefore look at making additional backups of your cloud data. The obvious way to do this is to back up one set of cloud data to a different cloud via a cloud to cloud backup. Cloud services such as G Suite and Office 365 have backups in place, but these are generally designed to protect the service provider rather than the user.
Cloud to cloud
It is really quite a simple concept: rather than backing up to a local device such as a hard drive or tape, you are backing up from one cloud to a different cloud. This adds another layer of protection by ensuring that you are keeping a copy of the data somewhere else – an off-site backup, if you will.
Making a cloud to cloud backup helps the business by ensuring that you can easily retrieve data in the event that it is accidentally deleted or it is corrupted by a cyber attack or malicious activity. As no additional infrastructure is required, costs of this type of backup are generally low; what’s more, you can easily adjust the amount of storage you need as your business grows or to cope with seasonal variations in the amount of data you generate.
Pros and cons
Backing up to the cloud has the advantage that the data is accessible from anywhere at anytime, providing you have internet access; therefore, just as with your cloud applications, the backup is still available if you are at a different location. This is convenient for IT teams, who can access all their information from a central point with no need to visit sites to make restores.
For smaller businesses, the advantage of having C2C backup managed automatically is a big plus. If the backup is carried out automatically, there is no chance of human error leading to saves being skipped or incorrectly carried out. You can do this while still having control of the essentials, such as how often saves are carried out, whether this is to a timed schedule or triggered by events.
As with any cloud service, you need to take the security of your backup seriously. It is essential that you use encryption and protect access to your cloud backup with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.
Any backup is only as good as the restore options it offers; therefore, you need to ensure you have a system with enough flexibility to recover your data, whether it is an individual file or a whole system.
