We live in an imperfect world where things don’t always go according to plan. More often than not, Murphy’s Law is in effect, and everything that can happen does happen. Not only is this true for life in general, but it is valid for everything around us, including our data. It is this imperfection that is the reason we want to address why you not only need system backups but offsite backups specifically.
Why do you need offsite backups?
- Preserve Primary Storage Space
- Protection Against a Complete System Crash
- Assurance in the Event of Hard Drive Failure
- Recourse in the Event of Data Breach
We will explore what offsite backups are, how they work, and how they can help your business continuity flourish.
What are Offsite Backups?
Offsite backups are a means of securing data to a server or media in a different location than the primary server. Local backups, stored on hard drives or media on the originating server, provide a sense of security in case a small issue occurs. If a single file becomes corrupted, backups stored on the server can be a quick way of retrieving those files and restoring them. Offsite backups provide a similar sense of security but on a much larger scale.
To understand the concept, think about your home computer. Anything stored on your computer would be local to your machine. If something happened to your computer, that data is lost. An external drive solves for this, in theory, because a copy of your information exists in a location other than your desktop. While it is not genuinely offsite from your home, it illustrates the point of how crucial offsite backups are to keeping your data safe.