Online backup makes it possible to copy all the data present on the company’s workstations, to store them on the servers of a service provider and to recover them if necessary. How does online backup work? Who are the market players? How to choose a solution adapted to your needs?
Online backup is a technique used to store a copy of the company’s files on remote servers, using specific software installed on the workstations. The transfer of the data and their consultation can be carried out with any device connected to Internet provided that it has the identifier and the password required to connect to the web interface of the provider.
With this method, it is possible to recover data corrupted or lost documents due to technical failure, disaster, or human error within minutes.
The online backup market is dominated by the major web players and Internet service providers, but there are also specialized providers. The first gigabytes of storage are generally free for individuals, which may be of interest to freelancers and small businesses with limited needs. For larger companies, however, it is better to contract a suitable package that includes additional services in terms of security and multi-account management such as cloud storage service providers.
How to choose an online backup solution
- Storage (and its price) => The online backup space made available to you in exchange for a monthly or annual subscription is the most important criterion for choosing between cloud storage providers. This storage is measured in gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB) of recordable data. The larger the package you choose, the higher the rate per GB or To decreases.
- Data duplication => In terms of online backup, the quality of service is determined by the ability to set up a redundancy of storage. You must ensure that the provider is able to instantly duplicate your data on a secondary server, in the event that the initial cloud server is affected by any incident or a malware.
- Data security => The implementation of electronic certificates and a data encryption (both server and client side) attest to the seriousness of a provider. Also pay special attention to the user password reset and recovery procedure, which should ideally include a two-step validation.
- Data synchronization => Many services include automatic cloud backup with instantaneous data synchronization. Thus, as soon as a document is modified on one of the workstations, the new version is immediately saved on the cloud server without your intervention. This saves employees a lot of time.
- Maximum file size => It is possible that some providers impose a maximum size per stored document, while others do not apply such restrictions. However, this maximum size is large enough that it is almost never reached in practice.