Backup is essential for every company that cares about its data. It is a backup copy of data stored in a safe place, which helps in case of loss of files, folders, e-mails or other data.
Why use backups?
- Ransomware attacks. You never know if your computer has become a target for hackers. If someone gains access to your or your company's data and manages to encrypt it, you will be asked to pay a ransom to decrypt it in order to regain access. Some backups prevent similar attacks and prevent files from being locked by hackers.
- Your or your employees' mistake. Every day you are exposed to data loss for a very simple reason: accidentally deleting an important document from your computer. This is a common error that causes us to lose important files. With a backup, you can easily restore lost data.
- Hardware failure. Failures always surprise and occur at the least expected moment, most often before you have time to transfer or secure data. Often, even if the equipment is repaired, data after such a failure is impossible to recover. With a backup, we will never lose important files, regardless of the fate of the equipment.
- Burglary and theft of equipment. No one is sufficiently protected against theft of equipment containing important files. Any insurance may cover the costs of stolen equipment, but we can forget about the data. A backup will guarantee that you will not lose the results of your work - often more valuable than the equipment.
Regardless of how we lose data, the problem becomes even more serious when sensitive data about employees, customers and cooperating companies is stored on company computers. The loss of such data would result in damage to the reputation and trust of customers and consequences arising from the provisions on the protection of personal data (GDPR). The rules for creating copies are specified in the so-called the 3-2-1 rule, according to which you should have at least 3 copies of data, store them on 2 different devices and keep one copy outside the company. Is it convenient to manually transfer each newly created file to the next two tools? Certainly not.
Free and commercial backup solutions come to the rescue.
Which backup should I choose?
It depends on the purpose for which you need to make a backup and what your expectations are. The choice also depends on whether you are an individual or implement backup for your company.
The most popular solutions worth considering according to: What we should pay attention to are cloud services:
Dropbox and Google Drive
If you are a private user, a free account with the above services will most likely be enough for you to store backup copies of your private data. Google Drive provides 15 GB in the cloud, and Dropbox 2 GB. Both solutions can also be implemented in the company - but to do this you will need to switch to a paid plan. You can store important files or folders in the Google cloud or Dropbox, which you can access at any time and from anywhere in the world. Please note, however, that these two tools are only cloud storage for specific files, not copies of the entire system. It is also worth noting that the free version of Google Drive does not offer GDPR compliance.
Acronis Backup
The Acronis service is an intuitive backup that can be used in every company. In this case, there are no limits to the capacity of the cloud, because the size of the disk space is adapted to the company's needs. The advantage of Acronis is that it is an automatic and very easy to use system. Additionally, it provides protection against ransomware attacks by using artificial intelligence to detect them. Acronis has a very simple central management console and an intuitive interface, which allows you to restore data yourself without the intervention of IT specialists.
Azure
Azure is a solution of Microsoft, one of the main providers of cloud solutions in the world. The Azure cloud has unlimited capacity, and the user pays in proportion to the space used. It is available in two models: PaaS and IaaS, i.e. as a platform and as infrastructure. The cloud is an ideal replacement for physical servers, which are exposed to failure every day and require large ongoing financial outlays. In the case of Microsoft Azure, we have a 99.9% service availability guarantee.
To sum up, backup is necessary in every company and every private user. For private use, Google Drive or Dropbox is certainly enough. In turn, if we are talking about securing important, confidential data or data about external people, we should choose commercial solutions such as Acronis backup or the Azure cloud, because such systems provide the best guarantee of data security.
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