Interestingly, more than 96% of business workstations don’t have data backup and recovery systems, which predisposes large amounts of sensitive information. However, businesses have slowly started appreciating the importance of backup and disaster recovery systems, especially using cloud services.
Initially, companies only factored in on-site challenges, such as power outages, server failures, and data loss in their backup and disaster recovery plans. However, with the world becoming a global village, thanks to advancing technology and widespread internet use, these ideas are extremely outdated. Currently, your strategy should factor in situations where you can’t connect to the internet.
You should access all the weak points in your business to develop a fail-proof backup and disaster recovery plan. You can handle any arising issue by identifying where mishaps can occur. This is where it comes to cloud backup options.
Even though the aspect of cloud computing isn’t entirely new, some businesses haven’t boarded this bandwagon yet. The best thing about using cloud backup is that you don’t have to reinvent your strategy entirely. You can maintain your data backup and disaster recovery strategy after integrating cloud computing into your business.
Simply put, the cloud offers a virtual way for businesses can store all their important information. All the sensitive data are kept in offsite data centers. Therefore, if there is an outage in your premises, your essential data can still be accessed.
What makes cloud backup attractive for small and medium-sized businesses is the low operation costs. Businesses with limited resources for maintaining data centers and IT teams can use the cloud. Cloud backup also significantly reduces the recovery time, as businesses don’t have to endure the lengthy software patching processes synonymous with traditional backup and data recovery options.
However, you should consider several factors before switching to cloud backup & disaster recovery strategy. Concerns to address include;
- Safety of data transfer and storage in the cloud
- User authentication
- Bandwidth requirements
- Security when accessing data – does it have two-factor authentication or just a password?
- If the cloud service provider meets the regulatory requirement
Also Read: 4 Things to Consider, before choosing a Cloud Backup Service Provider
Note that there are no one-size-fits-all cloud backup and disaster recovery services. Therefore, find what suits your business depending on your industry.
