Gone are the days when it was simple to back up applications and files. Today, most organizations have data scattered across on-premise servers and various locations in the cloud, often with different backup procedures and policies. This lack of consistency makes business continuity extremely difficult. It can also increase the risk of cyberthreats, because data can be inadvertently exposed to corruption, accidental deletion, or a ransomware or virus attack.
BackupAssist, which until now has been known for its automated Windows server backup and recovery software for Windows servers, aims to solve this problem with BackupAssist 365, a cloud-to-local backup solution. That’s different from most backup solutions for Office 365, which are cloud-to-cloud backup solutions. According to George Crump, president of storage analysis firm Storage Switzerland, BackupAssist 365 is one of the few that can send protected data back to an organization’s data center.
The net effect, explains, BackupAssist president Linus Chang, is that a customer can now hold his/her own data in his/her own hands: “They can point to the data and verify that it’s all there, even if there’s an account hijack or ransomware attack of data in the cloud.”
Keep It Local
What BackupAssist is doing makes a lot of sense, Storage Switzerland's Crump says.
“Part of the reason is centralizing backup on premises, and the other part is that it keeps data local. That’s a good thing, especially with Microsoft, since there are on-premises versions of the product,” he said.
Another advantage is control: With this product, Crump says, data is secure in the organization’s data center, and the organization can control which geography it’s stored in.”
BackupAssist 365 aims to specifically address cyber-security issues where cloud data can be deleted or the account can be hijacked. The product aims to help organizations achieve the generally accepted 3-2-1 backup principle (three copies, two media or devices, and one offsite copy) when data is in the cloud.
Other features of BackupAssist 365 include the ability to perform automated cloud backups according to a user-set schedule and archive data for compliance and discovery.
According to Chang, the product, aimed at small and midsize organizations, can save as much as 75 percent over cloud-to-cloud solutions. That’s due to both the lower cost of licensing and the vastly reduced need to pay for data hosting.
“It costs almost nothing to take a copy of your data, put it on a USB drive and sit it on the shelf for seven years," Change said. "But with a cloud-hosted solution, you’ll be paying for data hosting for seven years.”
