Online Data Backup

Online backup is the process of electronically backing up your data to a secure offsite facility.

In most cases, an online backup provider will download an agent (piece of software) on to your server or computers to be backed up which will allow the backup and restores to take place.

Some online backup providers will actually require you to purchase a piece of hardware that resides locally at your business to do the backup. With either type of backup, the data will automatically be backed up on a daily basis to an offsite location.

In the event that a user needs to restore data, the user can simply use the interface provided by the online backup provider or some have a web browser you can use to restore the files or folders that are needed.

The main benefits of online data backup are:

Automation: Most people claim that it is not that hard to just swap out a tape or an external hard drive, but if I were a betting man I would bet that everyone has forgotten to swap out the tape/external at some point in their career. Online data backup will completely automate the backup process in order to ensure that the backups get done on a daily basis.

Reliability: Statistics show that tape fails up to 50% of the time. Even if you are doing exactly as you are supposed to do, swapping the tapes out, taking them offsite, etc. there is a 50% chance that you might not be able to retrieve the data on the tape. Not very good odds. Online data backup is much more reliable than any other type of data backup out there. Most online data backup providers use RAID 5 and backup your data to several data centers.

Security: If you are 40 yrs or older you would probably argue that the internet is not secure and may have a hard time giving your data to the world wide web. However, because the Internet was not a very secure place for some time, many things have been developed to ensure the security of your data as it's being transferred online. Most online data backup providers will use some type of encryption when backing up your data. This turns your data into a bunch of 1's and 0's so that if someone were to be able to see your data, it wouldn't make any sense to them. Furthermore, the facilities that the online data backup providers use are much more secure and safe than your closet at home where most people are storing their tapes or external hard drives.

In a nutshell, online data backup has completely automated the data backup process and has made it much more secure and reliable than any other type of media out there.