Is Your Business Protected with Cloud Backup Alone? [Video]

The concept of the cloud has been around for decades, and it has proven itself to be an asset for protecting business backups. Cloud storage offers geographic redundancy, flexible capacity, and the ability to access data from virtually anywhere, making it an important component in most modern backup strategies.

However, the cloud alone will not be enough to ensure your backups are secure. Relying on a single storage location or technology creates a potential single point of failure, and factors such as connectivity, provider outages, and misconfigurations can all impact your ability to recover when it matters most.

Cloud services require a stable Internet connection to operate. There are many types of disasters capable of disrupting your connectivity—ranging from localized power outages and hardware failures to regional ISP issues and natural disasters—and if one brings down your systems entirely, your cloud backup may not be immediately accessible when you need it most. In those moments, having only a cloud-based copy can significantly slow down recovery, impact your recovery time objectives (RTOs), and extend costly downtime. It’s also important to pick a solution that aligns with your specific infrastructure, compliance requirements, and recovery objectives, rather than assuming a generic cloud service will be sufficient.

Rather than relying on the cloud alone to protect your data, follow the 3-2-1 rule: maintain at least three copies of your data, stored on two different types of media, with one copy kept off-site. In practice, this often means combining local image-based backups for fast restores with encrypted cloud backups for geographic redundancy.

Hybrid backup with both local and cloud-based backups helps ensure you can recover quickly from common incidents like accidental deletions or hardware failures, while still being prepared for larger regional or site-wide disasters. For more on protecting your backups and building a resilient hybrid backup strategy, check out NovaBACKUP today.