Online Backup Service

My Reponse to Client Inquiries

Over the last several months, many of my clients have been asking about Online Backup Service. Some of these questions have been precipitated by a vendor offering said service either themselves or through a third party who will give them a commission; er, I mean, a trusted third party.

Online Backup Services have their place

They do. Online backup services can be of great value in getting data to a secure location off site. But here is what you want to consider:

Q. Who should you trust with your data?

A. No one - in my opinion.

If your business relies on your data for your very existence, then NO ONE should care more about your data than you do. And NO ONE WILL!

I have seen many companies relegate the task of maintaining the backup to the lowest level employee they can sluff off the job to. No one wants to have to change tapes every day and take tapes home and bring them back. Therefore, the person who doesn't have the authority to give the job to someone else gets stuck with it.

But that isn't the way it should be.

Maintaining the backup of mission critical data, data required for the ongoing continuation of the business and profits, should not be dumped on the lowest level employee who can't say "no".

Neither should you take the least path of resistance in choosing a backup plan.

A reliable backup and disaster recovery plan may include more than one type of backup.

If an online backup service is the only way to get the data backed up or the only way to get it off site, then do it. Do your homework and decide:

• Who isn't going out of business?
• How long have they been doing this?
• Who can vouch for the reliability, dependability and service of the firm/service you are considering?
• Who isn't going to have their bank reposess their servers (aka realizing upon their collateral) for a delinquent loan. Never happens with Technology companies, right? Then who has access to the data? Not you, anyway. But maybe someone who shouldn't.
• Who has adequate security so that your data doesn't end up in the wrong hands?
• Who will help you get your data back when you need it?
• How long will they keep data backups? What happens when you delete a file, do they keep a copy? For how long? I just wrote a blog post about a data file I retrieved from a backup 15 years ago! Read about it here. What about a file someone accidentally deleted earlier in the year, needed only at year end?

When you are weighing your options for online backup service, don't make the decision based on price alone.

And don't be quick to let someone else, whom you have never met, have access to YOUR data.

Enough said.