The Advantages Of Online Backup: Why Is It Better Than Local Backup?

It is known to all that backing up mission critical data is the key to success of an organisation. However, many companies still decide to back up data locally in order to save money. There is nothing wrong with this decision, if you look at it from a financial point of view. A few boxes of dual-layer DVDs or even an external hard drive or two will cost much less than opting for the services of a rather expensive backup service provider. However, from the point of view of technicality and security, everything is wrong with this strategy.

External backup media, such as external hard disks, or optical discs, can easily get corrupted on prolonged storage. It does not matter if you keep DVDs locked up in a safe. Prolonged exposure to moist air is enough to harm the layer of dye inside the optical discs, leading to data corruption. External hard disks are not completely safe, either. No matter how safely you store these, one single accidental impact or static electric discharge is enough to make the data irretrievable.  

The best way to avoid such a disaster is to opt for an online backup service. Online backup can be of two types, one that you can set up locally, and another, where your files are stored online at some secured server hosted and maintained by the service provider.

Local online backup servers are powerful, high end PCs with terabyte after terabyte of storage space. These PCs are not used for any other purpose except data storage. Some backup software is installed in all the PCs, which keeps backing up files as the users work. The backup is absolutely transparent to the users; they do not have to do anything about it.

The only drawback is that these servers are often very expensive to set up. You will need to enlist the help of a sufficiently qualified system administrator to make sure that the server is maintained properly. Also, in case of a natural calamity or an accident at your workplace, the server will be affected along with all the other systems. If you wish to avoid this inconvenience and expense, it is best to opt for a third party backup service provider.

Backup service providers usually have secure servers for keeping backups of user data. The service may be provided either free of cost, or for an annual fee. The provider takes care of everything – be it providing security for the stored data, or taking backups periodically. There are several good providers who offer backup services at reasonable rates. If you are not confident about maintaining backups of your data internally, it is best to employ a specialist company.

Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery is one of the most important factors for most businesses, yet it is often overlooked or considered too expensive to implement.

Disaster recovery solutions enable a business to continue working in the event of fire, theft, malfunction or terrorism. By preparing for disaster recovery, your business will not lose any valuable data, configurations or time, saving you money in the long run.

By backing up data, applications, and settings continuously, to a secure location, your business will be ready for any disaster situation.

Any proven IT company can provide these services, but at what cost, and how good is it?

Since the introduction of Citrix and Microsoft's Terminal Services, it has been possible to provide these disaster recovery services at a much lower cost, with greatly enhanced security benefits.

Switch your IT system to a corporate-level, Terminal Services environment and what you get is a complete disaster recovery solution for a much lower cost than you would expect.

As well as having your data and applications held in secure data centres, your data could be continuously backed up, providing total disaster recovery. The ultimate solution is to have complete redundancy for your IT system and this involves not having any single point of failure within your IT infrastructure.

Imagine having your company's entire data, software and structure housed in two separate data centres, spread across two different ISPs, and having all your systems and data held on servers that have their own backup servers to automatically switch on, in the event of failure.

Most corporations do not have this level of redundancy, but for a fixed, monthly fee, this and more is possible for companies with anything from two uses to a thousand users.

Apart from all the mentioned benefits, you could also get the power of hosted Microsoft Exchange, Outlook Web Access, easy Blackberry mobile integration, hosted Microsoft CRM, and for the ultimate peace of mind, you can have portable security keys as used by major companies around the world to secure data, where password-only protection fails.

These systems and solutions put companies back in control of their IT, as systems are centrally managed, updated and supported from outside company offices, providing a completely outsourced solution that will save you money, instead of costing more.

Some companies get nervous by the prospect of their entire data being held offsite, but this can be the safest option as multi-million pound data centres have all the facilities to safeguard and protect your data 24 hours a day. With high-powered backup generators, security patrols and fire suppression equipment, your data and applications will be in complete safety, giving you a powerful remote system with disaster recovery to take your business to the next level.

Secure Online Backups, Are You Being Smart?

Data loss is one of the major problems especially in big business houses where a large number of data has to be dealt with and in all the circumstances the data loss can be minimized by using secure online backups. Although there are many conventional backup systems such as CD, DVD, and floppy that can be used for storing small amount of data, however for storing large amount of data secure online backup seems to be the right option.

Nowadays many commercial secure online backup providers are easily available and after paying a nominal fee, you can store your data at a remote location. These commercial online backup stores ask you to download their backup software and the software manages the backup and does the rest of job. A few commercial backup stores charge anywhere between 20 cents to 3 dollar per month for storing 1 GB of data, however there are some online backup stores who offer the online backup free for a limited period.

Actually you should ensure that the commercial online backup you have chosen is genuine and reliable and the privacy of your document is maintained. Many individuals take the benefits of these low cost commercial secure online backup facilities and store their family albums and other data. The software provided by commercial stores is easy to operate and with the instructions provided to you, you can install and operate the online backup software. You should try with a free online secure backup for a month and if satisfied with the services you should continue for the desired period.

The secure online backup software will generally have many features and the latest and modern software are equipped with highly sophisticated technique to protect the privacy of the data. The system ensures that backups are taken routinely as per your requirement and accordingly you are intimated by email. The software also ensures that the file system and directories structure is maintained during backup.

The software installed at your computer first compresses the data and sometimes the space occupied by the data is reduced to 85 percent. The data afterwards encrypted so that the privacy of these data is maintained and then forwarded to the commercial backup store via local area network or Internet. Due to the encryption of the data, these are even not accessible to the backup store employees and therefore the data are fully private and while retrieving the software installed at your computer decrypt the data.

The data loss is a very big problem for large business houses, commercial ventures and even for an individual and therefore secure online backup of data is one of the right options for each one of us. Sometimes it is also necessary to maintain the privacy of the data and therefore suitable commercial backup organization having an excellent track record should be carefully selected. So instead of taking a risk of loosing your important data, it is better to store and secure online backups available at a marginal price.

Why Online Backups Are The Only Choice For Many Businesses

Online backup is a process of taking routine backups of data and files from your computers or servers and it is generally taken at least once every week and ideally every day. This is one of the preferred data protection measures and nowadays all business organisations regularly take online backups of important data and documents.

Taking regular online backups of your essential documents and data is now very easy and initially your service providers may provide a free trial for a fixed duration. To begin your service, you simply download the online backup software and the software does the rest of the job.

The program collects the various files, compresses and encrypts the files and then sends these encrypted files to the remote server of the service provider. No one, even the employees of the backup company, has access to these files and the files decrypt only when they are received back on the originating computer or server. Thus, this ensures not only the safety of the data but also its security.

There are lots of features available including open file backup, binary data transfer, and continuous or predefined backup. Generally the software has the feature of taking backups even when several files such as Outlook emails or SQL files are open. The administrator, in such case, need not plan separate maintenance and backup schedules. Another feature is continuous backup of data instead of predefined schedule. Companies and especially financial institutions need continuous backup of financial records and banking statements for FSA regulation purposes.

The latest techniques allow the identification and transfer of only binary data that has been changed from earlier backups, instead of taking whole data files. This technique not only reduces traffic on local area networks (LAN) and the time required for online backup, it also reduces the bandwidth and hence the cost of backups. The other typical feature of backup software is that it is compatible with almost all the operating system environments such as Windows, Linux, UNIX, and Macintosh.

There are many advantages of online backups over traditional backup systems. First of all the user has nothing to do manually to store data, or take the backup of data. Secondly, with online backups the data is automatically stored on the remote servers at a predefined time intervals or continuously.

Secure online backups also use software that encrypt the files so no one can have access to the data, however in traditional backup scenarios, you have to ensure yourself that the data is safe as well as secure, by keeping it in safe custody as well as password protecting it.

Online backups are necessary for data safety and you should ensure that your data or the necessary documents should be stored at a remote and safe location for your business continuity in the event of disaster or hardware failures.

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