Purpose-built for easy, cost-effective off-site retention

Cloud backup storage is a service that protects your business-critical data from loss and corruption due to natural disasters, equipment failure, cyberattacks and other data disasters. It is also referred to as online backup storage or remote backup storage. These names are derived from the fact that a cloud backup storage solution uses secondary and off-site locations to store data that an organization deems to be critical. This ensures a redundant copy of data is readily available for retrieval when a data loss event damages or destroys the primary instance. Organizations opt for a cloud backup storage solution, instead of manually backing up data, to bolster their data protection capabilities.

A cloud backup storage solution usually copies data from its original location — whether in the cloud, in applications or on devices — and replicates it to a remote location through the internet for safekeeping so that it's available for recovery when needed. Cloud backup storage is flexible, easy to deploy and provides on-demand scalability. An organization can easily retrieve any or all of its valuable information, if it is backed up, by using a web browser or application.

1. Buy a cloud backup storage license or license storage capacity (sometimes referred to as a “bucket”)
2. Install its required components in your infrastructure (i.e., primary backup appliance, cloud gateway, etc)
3. Select the data you want to back up and keep safe

Now your cloud backup storage solution is ready to perform its basic functions. You can explore other advanced options like scheduling backups and automating replication to reduce human intervention in the backup process and ensure all your important files are continuously and automatically backed up for recovery.

Immutable backup storage refers to a solution that doesn't allow your protected data to be changed or modified in any way. This is commonly accomplished by replicating data into an isolated storage location that cannot be hacked into, deleted, encrypted or modified. No external source, not even the original backup appliance, can modify, change or delete data written to immutable blocks. Immutable backup storage ensures your data is always retrievable and safe from any data disaster — natural or manmade.

Immutable backup storage is important because cyberthreats are increasing — not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. Cybercriminals are constantly upping their game and trying to lure unaware users into exposing their credentials and other critical information that can be held to ransom.

A cyberattack or any other type of data disaster can halt business operations and cause grave financial and reputational loss. It can lead to downtime and customer dissatisfaction and even threaten the survival of small and medium-size businesses.

An immutable backup storage solution protects your critical data from these problems by isolating it so that even if cybercriminals are successful in their attempts, you have an extra copy of your important data stored in a place they can’t access.

A conventional data backup solution does not offer this advantage. An immutable backup storage solution makes your data immune to ransomware and other malicious attempts. It also offers you greater reliability and recoverability.

Cloud backup storage data centers are not unlike traditional data centers with a range of storage systems and devices. Just like a physical data center can be located anywhere in the world, cloud backup storage data centers can also be located physically anywhere in the world. For example, Unitrends Cloud data centers are located in the USA, Canada, Germany, the UK, Ireland and Australia.

A cloud backup storage solution can be licensed according to your retention and compliance requirements. Usually, service providers charge a fee based on factors like storage space or used capacity, bandwidth for data transmission, number of users and number of servers. Other vendors may license based on a combination of criteria such as the initial data footprint and required retention period, rather than a consumption-based model. For instance, the Unitrends cloud backup storage solution — Forever Cloud — lets you pay only for what you need. You decide how much data you want to store, how long you want to keep it and how quickly you want to recover your backed up data to ensure you meet your recovery time objective (RTO). You can even add our Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) to failover your critical workload in the cloud.

• Business Associate Agreement (BAA) of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• System and Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2), which is critical for the security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy of your system
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Any other compliance standards that are important for your niche or industry or that you wish to adhere to as an organization