The Advantages of Offsite Backup & Storage (Free Disaster Recovery Plan Template)

In the digital era, businesses no longer store critical data in filing cabinets. Instead, digital data is stored digitally, which is where the advantages of offsite data backups step up to the plate. Making this investment is critical in a world where 68% of business leaders agree that their cybersecurity risks are increasing.

Your data is your treasure chest. It’s what the essence of your business is. And just as you wouldn’t stuff your life’s savings under the mattress, you shouldn’t store your data exclusively at home.

What is an Offsite Backup?

Offsite backups are the digital equivalent of a safety deposit box. With 45% of businesses that had experienced severe loss of critical data losing it forever, it just makes sense to have a copy of your data that you can call upon should the worst happen. Offsite data storage can be defined as storing copies of your data at a physical location separate from your primary data center.

The infrastructure, such as servers, data centers, external hard drives, and even flash drives, differs depending on your disaster recovery plan. Still, the only rule is that it must be separate from your primary location.

Yet despite the inherent cybersecurity risks of not utilizing offsite storage backup, 96% of businesses don’t even back up their workstations.

Is Tape Storage a Good Way to Backup Data Offsite?

Cloud storage is the most popular data storage choice, with 90% of companies utilizing a cloud-based service in 2020.

One of the most effective ways to secure your data is offsite tape storage. Tape is a storage option that stores your data on a magnetic film strip. Businesses can write and read their data using a tape drive.

Each tape is then stored offsite in a locked, climate-controlled vault, known as tape vaulting. Although tape storage may sound archaic, it offers several disaster recovery advantages in the modern age, including:

  • Air Gap – Tape storage doesn’t require a connection to the network. This creates an essential barrier between any disaster at home and where your tapes are stored.
  • Immutability – If you use Linear Tape-Open (LTO) and Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) as part of your local and offsite backups, data may only be written once but read as many times as you want. This ensures that the data cannot be changed or deleted under any circumstances.
  • Tremendous Storage Capacity – Tapes have a substantial storage capacity. Some tapes also have compression ratios of 2.5:1, which allows capacity to be measured in terabytes on a single tape.
  • Low Cost – The storage capacity and relative affordability of tapes make it a more cost-effective choice for secure offsite data storage than external hard drives and cloud storage.
  • Lifespan – Tapes also come with a longer lifespan. Tapes can last up to 30 years if stored under the correct conditions.

Magnetic tape is a product of a previous age, making it such a secure option in a digital-first era. Although retrieving said data can take longer, this legacy technology offers an impenetrable defense against even the most sophisticated cyberattacker.

The offsite backup advantages of tape make it the go-to solution for long-term storage and archiving.

Download the Disaster Recovery Plan Template

What are the Advantages of Offsite Data Storage?

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Disasters can strike at any time. Most business owners immediately consider the risk of a cyberattack, but any number of disasters could wipe out months or even years of hard work. This may include fires or natural disasters.

Between 2016 and 2022, 122 billion-dollar disasters hit the country, causing over $1 trillion in damages. In the event of a disaster, possessing a robust offsite data backup storage and disaster recovery contingency can enable your business to function. If you can access all your data, you can minimize downtime and disruption while serving your customers as before.

Moreover, having multiple layers of offsite data storage can provide extra peace of mind. For example, using offsite backup tape storage for data recovery can allow your business to survive if your cloud storage provider gets hacked and forced offline.

Enhanced Security

Cybersecurity threats are rising. The problem in confronting this threat is cybercriminals are becoming ever more sophisticated in their methods.

Many security experts compare it to a game of whack-a-mole because new techniques are emerging as quickly as cybersecurity companies can confront them. Unfortunately, it’s often inevitable that a business will experience a cyberattack of some severity at some stage.

Offsite backups offer that layer of protection that lets you have your entire primary system wiped while keeping your data available and secure.

Ransomware attacks

struck 66% of organizations globally in 2023. This attack locks businesses out of their systems and holds their data storage until they pay a substantial fee.

Offsite secure data centers offer enhanced security measures to give businesses peace of mind, including:

  • Encryption
  • Physical security
  • Specialized compliance with data protection regulations
  • Climate-controlled media vaults

Note that these advanced security measures don’t just safeguard your business against malicious attacks. They also provide security if you experience accidental deletion or alteration of your data.

Scalability

Your data grows alongside your business. It’s estimated that by 2025, 185 zettabytes of data will be created, captured, copied, and consumed worldwide. Managing this growth can be problematic for businesses, especially if they experience a period of accelerated expansion.

Businesses can rely on offsite storage services that enable them to scale at a fraction of the cost and a fragment of the hassle.

It’s not just the scalability of offsite backups but the ease of scaling that makes it the best choice for businesses.

Cost-Effectiveness

Storing an ever-expanding data cache can quickly eat up your annual budget. Although larger organizations may opt to build and maintain an onsite data center, this is an enormous investment mandating:

  • Physical building and maintenance
  • Advanced data storage methods
  • Cost of security
  • Climate-controlled environments
  • Professional data storage experts

These costs are far above what the vast majority of enterprises can afford, especially at the current rate of data expansion. Instead, external offsite data storage is ideal because of the low upfront costs. In most cases, you could store your business’s entire data assets for a few thousand dollars annually, assuming you’re a larger business. Small businesses can enjoy even lower costs.

The money you can save on data security and disaster recovery can be diverted to other critical business operations, giving you a strategic edge.

Why Should You Use Tape Storage and Backup Data Offsite?

Offsite data backup and tape storage is cost-effective, easy to take advantage of, and highly scalable while giving you the enhanced security your business needs to confront everything from cyberattacks to natural disasters. A diverse mix encompassing connected storage options like the cloud and non-connected solutions like magnetic tape storage ensures your business is ready for anything.

Ready to Get Started?

Corodata has been supporting California businesses with reliable offsite backups. Contact the Corodata team today to learn more about safeguarding your data.
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