Today is World Backup Day so I thought it would be appropriate to address some common misconceptions about the cloud.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably used a cloud backup or cloud file sharing service. Even if you’ve only enabled ICloud backup on your Iphone… that counts.
For many consumers and businesses, services like DropBox, GoogleDrive and OneDrive are necessary to facilitate daily tasks. Some people start out using these services because they are free and allow ease of collaboration. Soon they slip into a comfortable state of depending on them as their sole “backup” for their data. Many people even use the terms cloud backup and cloud storage interchangeably.
Unfortunately, users often learn the hard way that cloud storage does not offer the same protection from accidental deletions and disruptions as cloud backup.
Ask anyone that has experienced Ransomeware! It will creep across not only your computer and network files but straight into that cloud account you have associated with your pc, encrypting everything in your Dropbox or OneDrive account as well.
Although both cloud backup and cloud sharing services are similar in that they store a copy of your data in a remote location, the way they treat that data once it is in the cloud is very different.
As a basic example you should think of cloud sharing services like OneDrive or DropBox as a flash drive. Saving data to that flash drive is easy, giving that flash drive to someone else for them to access your documents is also easy. At the same time deleting data off the drive is easy, the flash drive can become corrupt over time and there is no real security on the drive protecting your files.
A good cloud backup solution will take your files and encrypt them before they leave your computer so they can be securely transmitted to their final destination. It will also run backups on an automatic schedule. Removing the need to remind yourself to backup.
Even better backup solutions will take those features one step further and offer versioning, which retains multiple copies of your files, they offer complete imaging of your computer or server which is like a snapshot of your whole pc, and they ensure that files deleted from your computer are never deleted from the cloud.
While both cloud sharing and cloud backup are both necessary, they should not be confused. Neither takes the place of the other because they perform different functions.
If you’ve been relying on GoogleDrive or DropBox as your backup solution you may want to reconsider. Give us a call 512.869.1155 or shoot us an email and we can help you find a solution that’s right for you!