As businesses and enterprises grow, they generate more revenue. But this also increases their data size. This also makes data loss more damaging to the company because it will affect a huge audience. They might have done a good job handling or managing the data, but offsite backup is crucial to avoid data loss.
There could be any unforeseen event that can cause your data to be lost, like accidental fire, cyber attack, system failures, etc. This makes it important to take backups.
This alone should answer your question of why should you store backup media offsite. But let’s see exactly why you should take such precautions.
A Word On Offsite Backup
Backup is also called off-premise backups. This includes copying partial or full files that are on your host’s hard drive to another storage device.
This helps in data recovery and disaster management in case of floods, accidental fires, earthquakes, hard drive failures, etc. Let’s learn why should you store backup media offsite.
8 Reasons to Store Backup Offsite
1] Safe From Onsite Disasters
Onsite disasters could be anything. Even though you have taken precautions, there still is a chance of major failure. There could be an earthquake that might destroy the building, a flood or heavy rain, which might result in water getting into your system, accidental fire, short-circuiting, etc.
With offsite backups, you can recover your data during such unforeseen natural disasters and avoid massive losses.
2] Enhanced Data Security
Ransomware and cyber attacks have become a big issue for the majority of companies. Hackers specifically target companies to ask for big ransom money in exchange for their data.
With your data already available offsite as a backup, you do not even have to negotiate with such hackers. All you need is to recover your data, strengthen up loose ends, and get started again from where you left off.
3] Availability
There could be moments when you would need to access your data from some other place. In that case, you can use your offsite backup.
If it is on a cloud, then you can download your data and if it is on storage devices, then you can access them too at any time.
4] Human Error
Big companies have dedicated resources that are deputed to manage their huge data. It is possible that a resource mistakenly makes an error.
For instance, overwriting the data or deleting some files. This can be irreversible if you do not store your data offsite.
5] Performance Optimisation
Storing large data on your server will slow them down. They will take a majority of available space and other resources. Imagine software searching a folder with thousands of records, and only 20% of them are needed right now.
Why not store the rest of the 80% as offsite backup? This will ensure high speeds and greater efficiency.
6] Hardware Failures
Hardware, especially hard drives, has a lifespan. They have a particular number of read-write operations that can be done. After that, they are at high risk of crashes.
Hard drive crashes are common if they are not taken care of. This will lead to every bit of data gone. If you already have an offsite backup, then you would be able to recover the data and prevent losses.
7] Update Issues
Updates are supposed to bring improvements and resolve bugs that were present in the previous versions. They bring major changes and performance optimisation.
However, during updates, things can go bad. The worst case is your data being gone. The only way in that situation to recover your lost data is an offsite backup.
8] Peace of Mind
With your data available as an offsite backup, you will never have to worry about the consequences of data being lost. You will not have to think would your site host will help you recover your data.
You would not need to waste time and money in consulting with people to recover your data. You can be confident about your recovery strategies. That is why storing data as offsite backup leads to peace of mind.
Conclusion
With a growing business, the data size also grows, and so does the risk and loss if the data is lost or compromised. To combat any unforeseen event and circumstance in which you may lose your data, an offsite backup would be beneficial.
Be it a natural calamity, technical faults, human error, or cyber attack, you will always have peace of mind because you will be able to recover the data and bypass all possible damages.
