Backup is critical in any cloud strategy, but the location where data is stored is equally important

Backups are critical in any cloud strategy, but the location where data is stored is equally important. Explore these automated backup tools and services to avoid risk.

With today's frequent hacking and irregularities, companies often understand the importance of cloud computing data backup services.

In general, the purpose of data backup is to make a copy of important data and write it to a different storage medium (or a different storage system) than the data source. This prevents hackers from damaging the original source and backing up the data.

To meet backup needs, many organizations create backup volumes on the public cloud. However, if the enterprise is also active in the cloud, then backing up to the same public cloud poses a risk. Some recent cloud outages indicate that both source and backup data may be stolen or unusable. However, large public cloud providers operate in multiple data centers, allowing users to geographically disperse their source and backup data.

Backup is critical in any cloud strategy, but the location where data is stored is equally important

There is also a cloud data backup service that can use its own independent cloud storage as a second form of storage medium and back up data from one public cloud to another.

Cloud data backup service on leading platforms

Google Inc. and Amazon Web Services (AWS) offer separate storage spaces that can be backed up at a lower cost. Google's Coldline products are disk-based, which makes data access very fast. AWS's Glacier service uses a tape library, which typically takes one to two hours to access data. Amazon said the glaciers will be moved to disk, but others believe that tape latency actually has the added benefit of protecting data because it delays the time it takes for hackers to access data.

Microsoft provides its own automated backup service, Azure Backup, which creates a recovery service vault for backed up files, but can only be backed up within the same Azure zone. Although the tool is easy to use, the model does not conform to the second media rule. To work around this issue, you can use a third-party backup tool, such as the Scality portal from Azure to AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) object storage.

For many users, this S3 approach meets both quality media requirements and is able to retain three backups, one of which is in a different location to provide disaster protection. As long as the data stored in the cloud object storage is digested by a backup tool in another format, it is possible to prevent data attacks in the read content. Of course, assume that the backup is encrypted using a key unique to the backup system. Do not use the same key for source data and limit key access to several authorized administrators.

Even in this mode, you still need to prevent these S3 copies from being maliciously deleted. To ensure greater protection, use continuous automatic backup and permanent storage. The latter should be an option for any backup storage tier in the cloud and require human interaction or two-factor authentication to delete backup files. A package like S3 Backup provides this functionality.

Continuous snapshots and other forms of automatic backup

If the user does not need a second media rule, the data stream is continually snapshotted to ensure protection. Continuous snapshots are a form of permanent storage because all changes increase the amount of data and nothing is erased or overwritten. Snapshots can degrade performance, but they allow you to roll back data to any point in time, which is especially useful for ransomware attacks.

Google provides storage snapshots, while Nasuni offers third-party options for working with top cloud service providers.

After setting up the snapshot, they only need very little administrative input and the recovery speed is very fast. However, to maintain data access during downtime, implement these snapshots in different cloud and Availability zones.

There are also many third-party automated backup packages on the market, as well as backup-as-a-service (BaaS) providers that provide backups on their own storage. Its leading software packages, such as Commvault, CloudBerry, Nakivo and Druva, are cloud data backup services that can run in a hybrid environment. Veeam also offers N2W's Cloud Protection Manager as a backup tool for AWS.

All of these packages enable users to set backup sources and targets and then have them run as planned. They also offer data compression and encryption options.

Rubrik offers a BaaS tool that, like Unitrends, also supports data migration between AWS and Azure. Migrating to other cloud platforms will become the standard for these backup services in the near future, making the second media requirement easier to implement.

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