It’s a matter of fact that all websites are vulnerable to being lost. They are at risk of hacking, malware and ransomware infection, software corruption, hardware failure, natural disaster and human error. And while you can put security and other measures in place to minimise any risk, you also need to have a plan for what would happen if your website and all its content and user data were lost. The only quick and relatively painless solution would be to restore your website from a backup. Here we explain why cloud backups are the best option you can choose.
An Overview of cloud backups
There are lots of ways to back up websites. You can download them to a PC, store them on disks, or use a plugin that will upload a copy to your Dropbox, Google or Microsoft storage. A cloud backup solution is one that stores website backups on a secure internet server, in a geographical location away from your web server. Its advantage over the methods above is that you have greater control over your backups, can manage them easily and, most importantly, if the worst should happen, recovery is significantly quicker and easier. Here we examine the benefits of cloud backups in more detail.
- Never run out of storage space
One of the great things about the cloud is that it offers users instant scalability. That means, if you need more storage, it can be had at the click of a button. If you back up your entire website, including the software, content and data and need to keep several backups in storage, there’s always a chance that traditional storage methods might run out of space. If they do, then it will be impossible to make newer backups until the old ones have been deleted. With the cloud, this will never happen. What’s more, with a cloud backup solution you are in control of when older backups are deleted and can automate this to prevent you from needing extra storage. - 24/7 access to your backups
As they are stored in the cloud, you can access your backups over the internet at any time and from anywhere with a connection. So, if you lose your website in the middle of the night when you are miles away from the office, you’ll still be able to access the backups there and then in order to get your website back online. As a result, you can restore quickly and conveniently, and prevent damage to your business reputation or loss of sales. - Automated backups
Making manual backups can be a tedious chore. It means logging into your account, waiting for the website to download and then putting it somewhere safe. If you have to do this regularly, it’s all too easy to skip doing it and that’s when problems can occur.With a cloud backup solution, the process is automated. Simply set when you want the backups to take place and they will be done for you. It’s a process you only need to do once, not every time you need a backup, saving you lots of work and ensuring new backups are never forgotten.
- Backup frequency to suit you
Some websites need to be backed up far more frequently than others. If you have an online store, for example, you’ll constantly be getting new orders and people registering for accounts. To prevent you from losing those orders and account details, you might need to make a backup multiple times every day or even continuously.One of the key advantages of a cloud backup solution is that you can set the frequency of your automated backups to happen as often as your business requires. This way, should you lose your site, you can restore it from the recovery point you need.
- Secure encryption
To ensure your backup data cannot be stolen or interfered with, your provider will encrypt it for you. At eukhost, we use military-grade encryption during transit, and you can continue this while the data is at rest if you wish, though you would need to decrypt it before restoration. - Backups that work
When you move data from one place to another, there is always the possibility that it can get corrupted. This is especially the case if you transfer your backup to a drive that could have a disk error. This potentially leaves businesses in a position of needing to restore their website and finding out that the backup they need doesn’t work – a situation that could have disastrous consequences.With a cloud backup solution, this doesn’t happen as every backup is checked for integrity to make sure it will work. If a problem is found, you are notified immediately and can make another backup straight away.
- Backing up the backup
At eukhost, we provide an additional layer of security for our customers in that we make backups of your backups and store them in different data centres. What this means is that if something drastic were to occur that takes a data centre offline, such as a flood or fire, you’ll still be able to access your backups from our other data centres without delay. - Round-the-clock technical support
If you lose your website, restoring it quickly might be something you need assistance with. It is important, therefore, to choose a backup solution that includes technical support. At eukhost, expert technicians will be able to support you 24/7, 365 days a year. They won’t just help you with recovery either, they can support you with any hosting or backup-related issue.
Conclusion
Being unable to recover quickly from the loss of a website can put companies out of business. The longer it takes, the more customers and sales you will lose. Cloud backups enable you to make backups at the frequency you need them, they ensure your backups are secure and working, and they enable you to recover far quicker than other methods.
For more information about our cloud backup solutions, visit our Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud page.
