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Protect Your Business with Online Backup - Ten Reasons to Protect Your Data (Part 2)

Reason 7. Reduce compliance risk

Legal regulations as well as industry best practices require that long-term, off-site storage be provided for essential business data—particularly regulated healthcare or financial information. Yet managing and maintaining off-site storage is a stretch for many small and mid-sized businesses.

Online backup solutions help address requirements such as these simply and cost-effectively. Data is encrypted before it is securely transmitted off-site for disaster recovery needs. If long-term retention is a requirement, some online backup solutions even allow customers to retain up to seven years of historical copies of data. And if an audit occurs, robust reporting capabilities help demonstrate compliance.

Reason 8. Increase staff productivity

Businesses using online backup services avoid the time-consuming tasks of maintaining an on-premise solution, such as:

  • Running backup jobs manually
  • Cataloging, tracking, and managing portable media and off-site storage
  • Installing and testing backup hardware and software
  • Managing software licenses, support contracts, and upgrades

Once an online backup service has been configured, it runs in the background, providing "always-on" protection. Backups can be performed on a schedule or can be triggered automatically by file changes. Users can "set it and forget it" and free existing staff to perform other, more strategic tasks.

Reason 9. Protect remote offices and mobile employees

Even when businesses have a robust, advanced backup solution in place, some constituencies often go undeserved:

  • Mobile workers—individuals such as consultants, sales teams, and executives often spend a majority of their time on the road. These workers expose their laptops to significant wear and tear. In addition, they can easily misplace a system entirely or become a victim of theft. Despite these risks, mobile workers often fail to back up, or they back up only during brief stops into the office.
  • Remote offices—although small branch offices often have critical business information, they also often lack the IT resources to perform backups.

Online backup services provide a convenient option for addressing these communities. Mobile workers are able to stay protected every time they connect to the Internet. And remote offices can stream data continuously to an off-site location without having to worry about maintaining an onsite IT presence.

Reason 10. Keep backup data secure

Far too often, the source of a data breach can be traced back to a backup tape or other form of portable media that was not properly encrypted. Online backup services follow advanced security protocols to ensure that customer data is managed safely and securely.

Leading services use algorithms such as AES 256-bit encryption to ensure that data is protected before it is transmitted. This is the same encryption algorithm that the U.S. National Security Administration uses to protect files marked "top secret." Encryption keys are stored on the local client, ensuring that the online backup service provider cannot view the backup files under any circumstances.

Leading services also transmit data over the Internet using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology—the same standard used to protect online banking services and credit card purchases.

Summary

Online backup services offer a broad range of advantages over other data protection options in the marketplace today. Easy-to-use, feature-rich services are now available from proven leaders in security and data protection, allowing small and mid-sized businesses to enjoy the same data management capabilities as large enterprises, but without the associated cost and complexity.