Cloud backup vs. local backup — Why both are essential!
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The choice between cloud backup and local backup poses a vital question for businesses. In this piece, we delve into the advantages and drawbacks of each approach. Additionally, we provide insights on integrating these strategies to enhance data security, ensure seamless data retrieval, and facilitate disaster recovery when necessary.
In our latest blog, we analyse the most serious breaches, the common themes and share our advice on how to protect yourself against these kinds of attacks.
What is cloud backup?
Companies employ cloud backup services to securely back up their systems, applications, and data on remote cloud servers. These servers may be either private or public. While larger enterprises can afford and manage private cloud backup setups, smaller organisations often opt for public cloud storage solutions designed for multiple users. With public cloud backup services, the provider takes care of infrastructure management, and organisations subscribe on a monthly or annual basis for access to these services.
Advantages and disadvantages of cloud backup
The benefits of utilising cloud backups clearly outweigh any potential drawbacks, making it a preferred choice for numerous organisations when safeguarding their data.
Benefits of cloud backup
Achieve Cost Savings and Resource Efficiency
Embracing cloud backup solutions offers significant cost advantages compared to maintaining on-premises backup infrastructure. Say goodbye to the need for capital purchases, hardware and software maintenance, and lengthy approval processes. Instead, you'll enjoy the flexibility of a subscription-based model, categorized as an operational expense.
Robust Data Protection in the Face of Disasters
Local backups face the vulnerability of being wiped out in the event of a local disaster like fires, floods, or hardware failure. However, cloud-based backups remain sheltered from such catastrophes, ensuring that your organisation can swiftly recover and resume operations, even if your physical offices and systems are compromised.
Unparalleled Data Accessibility
With an internet connection, access to your backed-up data becomes accessible from anywhere, at any time. While restoring a complete backup from the cloud may take time, the process of downloading specific files is both rapid and straightforward.
Enhanced Data Security
While concerns about public cloud security persist, a seasoned cloud provider can offer superior security, particularly beneficial for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) lacking in-house cybersecurity expertise.
Resilience Against Cyberattacks
Cloud backups shield your data from cybercriminal attacks that target your on-premises systems. Attackers often tamper with or erase local backups, leaving your data compromised. With remote off-site backups in the cloud, your critical data remains safeguarded.
Effortless Scalability
Enjoy the advantage of scalability without the need for additional hardware or software investments. Scaling cloud services is seamless and on-demand, although it's important to note that your subscription cost may adjust accordingly.
Disadvantages of Cloud Backup
Considerable Time Required for Full Backup Downloads
The duration for downloading a complete backup from the cloud hinges on your internet bandwidth and the volume of data. This process may range from several hours to several days, depending on these factors.
Potential Data Loss Post-Contract Termination
Exercise diligence when assessing the cloud provider's contract termination policies. Ensuring access to and retrieval of your backups upon contract cancellation is crucial. Verify the duration for which the cloud backup provider retains your data after the contract ends.
Challenges in Switching Cloud Providers
Transitioning your data backup from one cloud provider to another can be a time-consuming endeavour. While you can back up your systems to the new provider, the migration of older backups to the new cloud infrastructure poses complexities. While certain tools facilitate cloud-to-cloud migrations, they are most effective for smaller data volumes.
In the case of substantial data volumes stored with the original cloud provider, the process entails downloading these files and subsequently uploading them to the new provider's infrastructure. The duration of these upload and download tasks depends on available bandwidth and can be quite substantial.
Different Types of Cloud Storage Backup
There are three Key Cloud Backup Methods: Full, Incremental, and Differential Backups
Full Backups:
Full backups entail the replication of every file from a specific device or network to cloud backup storage. In case of unforeseen events like natural disasters affecting your local backups, critical data recovery becomes possible through the comprehensive cloud backup.
Incremental Backups:
Opting for a full backup with every data modification can quickly deplete your storage resources. Incremental backup, on the other hand, scans for altered files since your last backup (be it incremental or full) and exclusively transfers these to cloud storage.
Differential Backups:
Much like incremental backups, the differential approach homes in on altered data for a fresh online backup. However, it considers only those files modified since the last full backup.
It's essential to note that initiating either incremental or differential data copies necessitates at least one full backup. While the first approach assures protection against local natural disasters and specific cyber threats, the second and third approaches grant greater control over your online backup process.
What is local backup?
Local backup, also known as on-premises backup, encompasses the comprehensive procedure of safeguarding your system, applications, and data by duplicating them onto a nearby device. These devices can include tapes, disks, hard drives, flash drives, CDs, external hard drives, or other on-site media, situated in proximity to the data source. While it is advisable for organisations to implement local backups, it's equally crucial to establish a secondary data backup on a distinct device, preferably stored off-site, to ensure the robust protection of your valuable data.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Local Backup
Local backup advantages
Rapid Retrieval of Extensive Data Sets
When it comes to recovering substantial amounts of data swiftly, local backups take the lead. Unlike cloud backups, local backups don't rely on an internet connection, ensuring speedier data retrieval.
Assured Data Location
Cloud providers may distribute your backups across various states or even countries, disregarding data compliance requirements. In contrast, local backups offer transparency in data location, granting you direct oversight and control over your backup data.
Local backup disadvantages
Limited Disaster Protection:
In the unfortunate event of a local disaster, such as a natural calamity, local backups situated near the data source—whether on a local system or within a local data center—become vulnerable. Hence, it's always advisable to maintain an offsite backup copy as a safeguarding measure.
Susceptibility to Cyberattacks:
Modern cyber threats, such as ransomware attacks, extend beyond compromising your systems and endpoints. In many cases, these malicious attacks kick off by erasing local backups, leaving you unable to restore infected systems and raising the likelihood of acquiescing to ransom demands.
Challenges in Scalability:
Expanding your local backup system's capacity necessitates substantial investments in additional hardware and software resources, particularly when accommodating larger volumes of backed-up data.
Options for Local Backup
There are two primary choices for local data backup: HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) and SSDs (Solid-State Drives).
HDDs have a longer history in local storage and tend to be more budget-friendly due to their established technology. However, they come with certain physical data protection risks, primarily because the read/write arms within an HDD are susceptible to damage during movement. It's essential to exercise extreme caution when handling HDDs to safeguard the data stored on them.
On the flip side, SSDs offer notable advantages. They are renowned for their speed, quicker boot times, and enhanced energy efficiency, making them an excellent choice for extended local backup solutions. Additionally, SSDs operate quietly, as they lack moving components that generate constant noise, providing a more peaceful working environment.
Cloud vs. local backup — Which to use and when?
Selecting the optimal data backup strategy to ensure data integrity is a critical decision for business owners. When evaluating cloud backup vs. local options, achieving the right balance can be challenging. That's why thorough research and thoughtful planning are essential.
Cloud backup solutions offer an additional layer of security for data backups, facilitating disaster recovery from virtually anywhere, and the ability to back up data from multiple devices concurrently.
For businesses requiring rapid scalability within a short timeframe, third-party service providers can swiftly address storage needs, eliminating the necessity for on-site staffing. Moreover, cloud computing can prove cost-effective for larger enterprises handling substantial data volumes, thanks to the expansive storage capabilities of modern cloud servers.
However, it's important to note that an effective cloud backup solution relies heavily on a reliable, consistent global internet connection to outperform local backups. If your business prioritizes on-site accessibility and swift disaster recovery, a local backup approach may still hold value.
Keep in mind that local storage demands end-to-end encryption, a dedicated data center, and on-site backup specialists to manage critical tasks, making it a high-maintenance endeavour for many organisations.
Cloud and local backup combined — Hybrid Backup
Let's momentarily set aside the cloud backup vs. local backup debate. Both approaches share a common goal: safeguarding your data and ensuring efficient data recovery in the event of disasters or downtime.
To mitigate the risk of data loss comprehensively, adopting a hybrid backup strategy that incorporates both local and cloud backup is imperative. This strategy adheres to the industry-recognised 3-2-1 backup rule, where data is stored in three locations, spanning two different media types, with one backup copy securely stored off-site, often in the cloud. Several reasons underscore the wisdom of this hybrid approach.
No matter the robust security measures implemented by your IT team and cloud provider, the threat of a cyberattack compromising a backup always exists. In the event of an attack on your production systems, it's highly likely that your local backup may also fall victim or be deleted. However, with a cloud backup copy in place, you can swiftly restore your systems to a pre-attack state. The same principle applies if your local backup systems encounter issues for any reason; your cloud backup serves as a reliable recovery resource.
Furthermore, in the exceedingly rare scenario where your public cloud backup copy faces compromise or data loss stemming from a disaster affecting the cloud provider's infrastructure, your local backup copy becomes your invaluable lifeline for system recovery.
Solution: Acronis backup & recovery and cybersecurity
Acronis Cyber Protect stands as a pioneering solution that seamlessly merges data protection, cybersecurity, and endpoint management into a single, comprehensive offering. All of this is administered through a unified console and streamlined with a single agent installation. With Acronis Cyber Protect, you gain the ability to create full system backups, encompassing operating systems, applications, and critical data. These backups can be securely stored both in the cloud and on local devices, ensuring rapid and reliable recovery options.
Beyond data protection, Acronis Cyber Protect takes cybersecurity to the next level by safeguarding your systems and data against an array of threats, including malware, ransomware, and cryptominers. Leveraging advanced AI and ML-based protection, automated patch management, vulnerability assessments, and URL filtering, it delivers comprehensive security for your organisation.
In today's dynamic work landscape, remote work capabilities have become essential. Acronis Cyber Protect caters to these needs by offering remote work and anti-pandemic features, ensuring the security and integrity of your systems and data, regardless of your location.
Whether your organisation's IT department or a managed service provider (MSP) is at the helm, Acronis Cyber Protect provides a cost-effective solution. It is designed to help your organisation steer clear of downtime, prevent data loss, and fortify defenses against security breaches, including zero-day attacks. Discover the power of Acronis Cyber Protect and elevate your cybersecurity and data protection strategy to the next level.
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