Backup-as-a-Service FAQ

We’ve been covering IT security pretty heavily recently, and for good reason. From increased cybercriminal activity to all-out cyber warfare, the spotlight is on protecting businesses from disaster–whether that’s a cyberattack, a natural disaster or an internal error. Now is the time to protect your business from the expected and unexpected situations that can arise in a modern IT environment.

We’ve found our clients and prospects asking some really great questions about the best strategies for protecting their business with backups. These five questions come up often:

1. What’s the difference between Backup and Backup-as-a-Service?
   Backup is a copy of critical IT data stored in a separate location from that primary IT environment. Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) is a vendor-managed cloud backup service that offers added resiliency and flexibility. Involta BaaS offerings reduce network traffic and provide more efficient backups, defined service level agreements (SLA), simple single-step restoration and auditability to help you meet your compliance needs.
2. What should be backed up?
   Companies should back up the most critical data—things that are essential to keep the business running. Think personnel data and files, financials, client agreements, sales and marketing data and materials, administrative records, insurance, etc. If it’s essential for running your business—or if its absence would disrupt critical operations—it should be backed up.
3. Where should backups be stored?
   Backups can be stored locally (although this method is not recommended), offsite, offsite in a secure data center or in the cloud. If you’re planning on BaaS for cloud storage, you’ll need to determine if your backups will be stored in the public cloud, private cloud or a hybrid cloud option that combines both public and private cloud. Every business will have a different level of comfort, so it is important to understand the benefits and challenges of each backup storage option.
4. How should a recovery point objective (RPO) be selected?
   An RPO is the maximum amount of data that will be lost (defined by a period of time) after a disaster (e.g., natural disaster, cyber attack). RPOs are selected based on how often files are updated and the level of importance to overall operations. Further, RPOs should be determined for various parts of the business or types of data. RPOs are often categorized as:

   0-1 hour – Critical
   1-4 hours – Semi-critical
   4-12 hours – Important
   12-24 hours – Semi-important

   Part of engaging with a BaaS provider includes working through this exercise to assign appropriate RPOs and the associated recovery time objectives (RTOs).

5. Is backup enough?
   Backup is an important part of protecting a business, and having a backup strategy in place is a smart strategy. But (there’s always a but, right?) backup alone may not be enough to prevent high costs or downtime during recovery. Backups are strengthened by a full disaster recovery plan and associated services. Having reliable and current backups is essential to a successful recovery after a natural or manmade disaster.

We hope that these questions and answers helped clear some of the air surrounding protecting your IT environment with BaaS. If you’re interested in exploring further, download the Involta PrivateCloud™Backup and Recovery Service Overview.

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Or reach out to an Involta representative. We’re here to help you Get There, putting the best solutions in place for your unique situation.