Why Offsite Backup isn’t a Maybe – it’s a Must

IT and business leaders understand that backing up data is essential, but they often overlook the need to include offsite backup in their recovery plans. Offsite backup isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s vital for delivering the recoverability and redundancy that every organization needs to ensure critical files are always available, even when disaster strikes.

That’s why offsite backup is a key requirement in many data protection and retention regulations, such as HIPAA in the US and §75 SGB V in Germany. But offsite backup is about more than ticking compliance boxes. It’s a highly effective way to ensure you can recover your data if your local storage is hit by a ransomware attack, infected with malware, or taken out of action by a flood or fire. By maintaining an independently stored copy of your most critical systems and datasets, you create an additional layer of resilience that doesn’t rely on the health of your production environment or your local backup device.

There are several options for offsite backup, including physically rotating tapes to another location, replicating data to a secondary office, or using a third-party data center. However, for most businesses, cloud backup is the most convenient and cost-effective option. Backing up data to the cloud means backups can be fully automated and centrally managed, rather than uploading data to tapes and then physically moving them somewhere else.

The cloud also separates backup data from the local network, which is a great way to protect it from ransomware and malware and helps you follow best practices. Local backup storage offers faster access to lost files and full system restores, but cloud backup offers invaluable peace of mind by ensuring you always have a secure, offsite copy to fall back on when the unexpected happens.

The Business Value of Cloud Backup

Using the cloud for your offsite backup brings many advantages and allows you to:

• Enhance recoverability: With a redundant copy of your data stored in a secure cloud (with its own built-in redundancies), it’s much easier to recover from local disasters, whether they’re malicious attacks, extreme weather events, or accidental deletions.
  
  
• Stay resilient to cyber threats: Cloud backup mitigates the damage of local security incidents by giving you a clean copy of data to restore from and get your business up and running again.
  
  
• Simplify compliance: By using cloud backup with end-to-end encryption to store sensitive data, you can meet even the strictest data retention requirements – and get a full audit trail of backup activities.
  
  
• Gain flexibility and instant scalability: Many cloud backup providers offer pay-as-you-grow models, so you only pay for what you need, when you need it. In the cloud, your backup storage adapts to your changing business needs at the push of a button.
  
  
• Streamline backup management: Cloud backup allows your administrators to manage and monitor backup jobs from anywhere. With centralized backup management, it’s much easier to stay in control as your data volumes and number of endpoints continue to grow.

Key Considerations for Your Cloud Backup Strategy

When you’re planning a robust backup strategy to protect your business and your customers, there are five things you should keep in mind.

1: Cloud storage isn’t backup

There are several common misconceptions about cloud backup, including that it’s not really “offsite” because it’s connected to the local network. In reality, properly implemented cloud backup creates a logically and physically separate copy of your data in a hardened data center, isolated from your production environment and your local backup storage. This separation is critical when you’re dealing with ransomware, insider threats, or site-level incidents that can impact anything connected to the local network.

It’s also important to distinguish cloud backup from simple cloud storage or file-sync tools. Cloud backup software keeps backup data separate from local networks and file systems, unlike cloud storage solutions, where a local deletion or corruption will typically sync and modify or delete the cloud copy as well. With true backup, your data is written to a protected repository under policy-based control, not just mirrored in real time.

Cloud backup will also allow you to recover older versions of your files so you can restore to a specific point in time. This versioning capability is essential for meeting recovery point objectives (RPOs) and for rolling back after a ransomware attack, accidental overwrite, or silent data corruption that went unnoticed for weeks. Instead of only having access to the most recent (and possibly compromised) data, you can choose a clean, earlier backup set and restore exactly what you need—whether that’s a single file, an application, or an entire system.

2: You still need local backup

The cloud isn’t an alternative to local backup; it’s a convenient way to help you follow the 3-2-1 backup rule (three copies of data, on two types of media, with one copy kept offsite). Instead of thinking “cloud or local,” it’s better to think about how cloud and local backup work together as part of the same strategy. A hybrid backup approach is important to recover from different types of data loss, from a single accidentally deleted file to a complete site-level outage.

For example, if you need to restore an entire system rather than a handful of files, local backups will be faster and will help you keep recovery time objectives (RTOs) low. You can quickly spin up a replacement server, recover a full image, or restore a virtual machine directly from local storage without saturating your internet connection. But if your local storage is incapacitated—whether by ransomware, hardware failure, theft, or a natural disaster—a cloud backup will help you return to productivity quickly by giving you a clean, offsite copy to restore from. With the right backup solution, you can orchestrate both local and cloud restores from a single interface, choosing the fastest and most reliable recovery path for each scenario.

3: The best solutions will support all your backup needs

To make backup management as simple as possible, it’s important to have a single solution that supports all your backup activities, whether local or offsite. When everything’s connected, it’s much easier for administrators to manage. And if direct access to expert support is only a phone call away, it’s easier still.

4: Where is the cloud?

Regulations in many jurisdictions have strict data sovereignty guidelines and insist that all sensitive data must remain in-country. When you’re considering cloud backup providers, it’s essential to consider where your data will be stored and whether the provider can guarantee that data remains within specific national or regional boundaries. This is especially important for regulated industries such as healthcare, legal, and financial services, where auditors may require clear proof of where backup copies reside and how they are protected.

You should also evaluate whether your provider offers multiple data center locations, regional redundancy, and the ability to select or change your storage region as your compliance needs evolve. Geo-location could also have an impact on connectivity and data accessibility, influencing backup windows and recovery times, so you may need to decide if you want to use cloud backup for large quantities of data (such as full system images and virtual machines) or just your most important files and application data. Balancing data sovereignty, performance, and cost will help you determine the right mix of local and cloud backup for your environment.

5: Get the right level of data encryption

Your cloud backup software should keep data encrypted in transit and at rest, so it’s never accessible to anyone (including your backup provider) other than you. This means data is protected when it leaves your network, while it’s stored in the cloud, and when it’s restored back to your systems.

End-to-end encryption doesn’t just enhance data protection and privacy, it also helps you align with strict compliance requirements by ensuring only authorized users can ever read the data. Additionally, it removes the effort and expense of setting up and maintaining a VPN for your backup jobs, simplifying your infrastructure while still keeping your offsite backups secure.

Ready to Learn More?

If you’d like to discuss your backup challenges and explore the right backup strategy for your business, we’d love to hear from you. Book a 30-minute consultation with one of our backup experts to get practical advice on the best options for your unique needs.