Are Your Cloud-Based Software And Applications Safe?

Cloud security should be a top priority for your business, especially if all of your software and applications exist on the cloud.

Fortunately, there are a number of ways to back-up your cloud-based software and operate your business with peace of mind.

With secure clouds in mind, here are a handful of pointers to keep in mind when backing up your business's cloud-based activities:

Take Advantage of Encryption

If your business wants to protect its applications and software during the backup process, then it's important to use encryption.

Believe it or not, only about half of cloud-based businesses use encryption during the backup process. This creates a back door scenario for intruders to wreak havoc on business systems.

With end-to-end encryption, your business's software, applications, and data are all protected during each scheduled backup. This includes backup protection throughout the transmission process.

Sure, encryption adds another step to backing up your software, but it's well worth what little time it takes.

Conflict-Free Backups

Setting up your applications and software to automatically backup to the cloud is a must, especially if you're running multiple programs and apps.

However, the main concern for businesses looking to back-up to the cloud is bogging down their systems during automatic backups.

As the article, “Do you have a backup solution for your cloud-based software & applications?” looks at, if the answer is no, then it's important to choose a service that doesn't interrupt your daily computing activities during the backup process.

Fortunately, there are a number of cloud service providers that offer latency-free backups.

These backups don't affect your app and software running speeds during automatically scheduled backups.

Backup De-duplication

Data de-duplication is a must when backing up your business data to the cloud, but what about your software and applications?

When backing up your software, it's important not to duplicate the data that exists on that software - doing so would result in the need for more bandwidth and storage.

To avoid this scenario, make sure you have software version de-duplication protocol in place during the backup process.

By analyzing and de-duplicating your software and application data, you can ensure your apps are up to date and run at top efficiency if you ever need to recover them from the cloud.

Automatic Backup Scheduling

As mentioned previously, automatic back-ups of your software and applications is one of the best ways to take advantage of the cloud. However, it's equally beneficial to have the right cloud backup schedule in place.

Weekly software and application backups are commonplace, but that doesn't mean your business can't backup to the cloud more often.

Depending on how active your business apps and software are, you may want to consider backing up to the cloud two or even three times a week.

Choose the Right Service

Before you choose a cloud backup service, it's wise to weigh your options and choose the best service provider for your business. What kind of backup features does the service provide?

Additionally, how many computers are included in each backup? What are the storage costs involved? Are full disk backups available? Does the service cover multiple operating systems?

By considering all of these options and weighing the costs involved, you'll have a better chance of choosing the right service the first time around.

When it comes to keeping your applications and software safe, keep in mind the cloud-based backup options mentioned above.