Offsite Backup Definition and Types. How to choose an offsite backup solution?

What is offsite data backup solution? The most popular offsite backup challenges and features.

Every modern company understands that there is a possibility of malfunction in storing important information, so businesses try to protect their data by backing it up. In case of damage to hardware, software, etc. and consequent loss of important data, it is then possible to recover it. There are two ways to backup corporate data and each of them have both advantages and disadvantages: these are onsite and offsite backup.

Offsite backup is the replication of the data to a server which is separated geographically from a production systems site. Offsite data backup may also be done via direct access, over Wide Area Network (WAN). Onsite backup means the storage of the backup data on local storage devices such as hard drives, DVDs, and more.

Offsite backup solutions help organizations to safeguard digital information from unexpected events which in one way or another represent data loss, partial or total, which may affect the organizations operation.

For protection of digital information, two different approaches are typically used for the destination of backups: local and/or remote locations.

Local locations are used, generally, for the backup of information of equipment of a LAN to tapes or autochangers connected directly to the servers, or to NAS or SAN solutions, or in a same physical space. They are physically close by, but in a different, accessible place.

Local data backup allows organizations to have a mechanism to recover user or machine information from computer systems, applications, databases, etc., in situations that are usually only affecting operations in a partial manner. Often there are different levels of criticality according to the processes involved. Generally, many of these data recovery situations are accidentally caused by users.

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It may be important that with local backup, the speed of both backup and recovery processes are probably faster, assuming a reasonable network, and the times of recovery are less in comparison with other backup destinations. This may be significant in achieving successful compliance with an organization’s policies regarding backup windows and other requirements.

The use of remote locations on the other hand, guarantees organizations to have recovery mechanisms in case of situations that totally affect their operations. For example, in the case of natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc.) or physical failures in infrastructure, such as electrical problems, fires, access control violations, robberies or other forms of attack.

For the management of remote destinations, it is necessary that the backup applications consider and manage the necessary variables needed for operation. This is the offsite backup solution concept, which maintains the characteristics of a backup and recovery solution while allowing the copy and retrieval of the data to/from remote storage sites. This could involve a remote device or computer system, or a service or resource in the cloud, such as Google, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, etc. Of course, adequate levels of security and speed are important

Offsite backup as a helpful measure in case of a data breach

A natural disaster or an unfortunate accident aren’t the only reasons that can cause data loss. Another popular factor of losing a company’s data is a data breach. Data breach is when your sensitive or private data gets into the hands of an unauthorized party. Data breaches are getting more and more common in the last several years, and a new breach happens basically every month or even more often, causing a lot of sensitive data to get into the wrong hands.

There are several different exploits and weaknesses that can be used to gain access to your data, including weak passwords, malware, software vulnerabilities, and more. The main purpose of offsite backups in case of a data breach is the ability to get a clean copy of your data that is not infected to look for a way to start cleaning up your main server from compromised data. Having offsite backups also allows you to lessen the downtime caused by a data breach. Such advantages could’ve been helpful to a lot of companies that suffered a data breach in the last several years, like Landry’s, PhotoSquared, and more.

Offsite backup best practices

Offsite backup can become your last hope in case of a disaster. And even though a lot of companies know this, there’s still a lot of mistakes when it comes to offsite backup handling. Here are some of the best practices that you should implement with your offsite backup.

• Verify your backups manually or automatically. It is not impossible for a backup to go wrong somehow, and you’ll probably only know it only when you’ll need that backup to be ready for the restoration process. That’s why it’s important to have at least some way of monitoring your backups. One way to do it is to perform it manually or have a specific person that does that for you – although there are some backup solutions that offer automatic backup monitoring, too.

In addition to the above functions offsite backup solutions may also allow:

• Remote access to backed up data from anywhere to people with the appropriate permissions and access levels.
• Reduced maintenance costs of backup infrastructure in resources such as servers, tape drives and robotics. In the case of cloud-based solutions, expenses related to these items are not necessary. With a cloud based solution, all activities of maintenance and replacement of parts and equipment are carried out by the responsible provider of the datacenter and its platform.
• Management of the resources defined in virtual environments, in a way that makes their implementation possible in an agile and efficient way. These include: snapshots, virtual instance backups and host that are running virtualized environments, etc.

Therefore, offsite backup software should consider:

• Security in the safekeeping of the data, since they are in relatively publicly accessible sites on a network. In the case of remote locations belonging to the company, levels of physical access to these sites must to be reinforced.
• Organization and adequate management of bandwidth, in order to ensure the execution of the copy processes in an integrated manner and with adequate response times for the restoration operations, according to service levels.
• Easy adaptability to the changes that may occur in the configuration of the information to be backed up or recovered, as well as the resources to be used.

In addition to the above, there is an important point to consider in offsite backup solution based on the cloud: the increasingly frequent use of hybrid platforms, that is, those with shared resources in local and remote sites, managed from a single software platform. This represents an operative scenario with potentially more elements to be taken care of.