PerfectBackup Limited is a leading provider of secure online backup solutions. A company with offices throughout Europe we serve customers such as home users (SOHO) through to large corporations with thousands of users. Above all else PerfectBackup understands the value of your most important asset, your data, as a result we offer cost effective offsite backup solutions to suit any requirement no matter how simple or complex your IT infrastructure may be.
Regardless of the size of your company or the size of your requirement our online backup clients will experience an unrivalled level of service. All our online backup services offer you a fully automated, totally secure and affordable backup solution guaranteeing your data will always be available for restore.
Remove any business data vulnerabilities by employing and totally secure and automated internet backup solution so you or your business will never have to face the consequences of data loss. .
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Data loss statistic. 50% of small businesses will suffer data loss. Almost 75% of companies who lost data will go out of business within 16 months.
Online Backup, the IntroductionEvery company owner or director who does not backup mission critical data is putting their business at risk. We all think it will never happen to me, but within the last 18 months there has been an unprecedented level of data loss in the UK. The main causes are natural disaster (flooding is at the top of this list) followed by hardware failure, user error, virus, theft and finally data corruption. If you do not backup data there is a larger chance of your data being lost than not. Online backup solutions will automatically protect your business data by despatching it to a secure data centre automatically. An online backup solution puts you in control, via the backup software you state the data to be backed up and when. The backup software will then run in the back ground monitoring your data then at the scheduled time it will encrypt, compress and the send your data via your existing internet connection to your online backup provider’s infrastructure. Should a file be lost then you access your data and restore which files you need. Understandable many companies are worried about sending their confidential data to a 3rd party to look after, especially via the internet. The key feature of any online backup service is the encryption process; no data is transferred until your data is 100% secure, therefore nobody can read your data unless they have access to your encryption code. Most suppliers can now even restrict restores to a specific IP address, so nobody will be able to restore unless they have your encryption code and are sat at your desk. As you can now understand, online backup is very secure. The Fundamentals of Data Backup For as long as computers and servers have been used for business processes data backup has always been around, it was not a sophisticated as it is today but still, backing up still took place. There was no online backup services available in those days so we all relied on various medias to store data each, with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages.You could say to backup in any way is better than not to backup at all, and I would have to agree, however you must also consider the effectiveness and efficiency of your backup method. If you currently backup to CD, DVD, Tape or an external hard drive then the media becomes subject to the same potential disasters such as fire and flood as well as not so natural disasters such as virus, corruption or theft. Always move backed up data offsite, as far away from your working environment as possible.If you do backup to DVD or tape media then it is best practice to employ the services of a secure data storage company to collect your data on a daily basis for safe storage. Whilst this is offers the best solution for local backups you will find this service expensive and can be a huge drain on employee time and resource. There have been cases where such a 3rd party collection companies have lost backup media, to lose this data is a serious issue, it may be an even larger issue is this data ends up in the hands of your competitor.Online backup solutions do not need any expensive hardware such as a tape drive or DVD drives and is not licensed on a per server/computer basis. The only requirement is broadband or high speed internet connection and you can deploy the backup software as many times as you wish. You can schedule backups to run many times as required every day. Because the backup takes place automatically in the back ground you will never need to spend any of your time protecting data ever again allowing you to get on with more proactive business tasks. How online backup works Nearly all online backup software supports all major operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, All flavours of Linux, most versions of Unix (Sun Solaris, HPUX, IBM AIX, SCO) and Novel to name a few and will support all major applications (Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Microsoft ISA Server and more). As already stated, you do not need anything other than a high speed internet connection to backup your business data.When online backup software is installed and configured it automatically schedules all business data, be it files, documents or complex databases to be backed up every night or when scheduled. The important factor is the restore features, not only can you restore your whole file/database structure you can also easily restore individual documents and emails at the touch of a button. It is an enterprise class backup solution that requires the knowledge of a novice to manage and restore.Because of the traditional restraints of you internet connection the thought is when an online backup solutions back up for the first time is akin to filling up a swimming pool with a hose pile, initially it takes a long time for the initial fill (first backup) but thereafter you are only topping up (incremental backup). Most offsite backup providers are aware of this issue an allow seed loads. A seed load is where you use the online backup software to backup to a local NAS box or hard drive, once completed you can send you drive to your backup supplier who will transfer the data to their storage infrastructure. Thereafter you will only running incremental backups.Even incremental backups will sap bandwidth, so all businesses will either schedule their backup out of working hours or will schedule multiple backups per day, thus reducing the amount of data which is backed up in working hours. The real benefits of online backup are that you can backup your data at the frequency you require. Data Recovery and Online BackupBacking up data efficiently and in automatically and secure fashion is fine but what about recovery? There is no point backing up your data if you cannot restore quickly. Online backup allows you to restore data in a multitude of ways. You can recover a single file or folder at the click of a mouse or your online backup provider will usually send all your data to you on a same day basis should you have suffered a catastrophic failure.Additional Features of Online BackupOnline backup solutions are now the best fit for many businesses because of the features which make data backup as easy and as efficient as possible. It offers business owner piece of mind whilst freeing up employee time allowing increased productivity and business development.Listed below are the common features usually associated with online backup solutions:-High Level Data Encryption: This is the most important feature of any online backup solution. Before data is transferred to the storage centre it is a must that data must be encrypted to the same levels used by national banking institutions. 128bit encryption, Advanced Encryption Standards (AES) offers the best performance against security. If any higher level of encryption is used then your computers or servers will spend more time encrypting than actually backing up. The basic rule is it will take a high performance server around 9 years to crack data secured by 128bit encryption. A password or encryption key is required and data can only be restored by the holder of the key.IP Address Permission settings: This option allows you to select who is able to restore data. It is another level of security, even if another member of staff obtained your encryption key; they would still not be able to restore your data if they were sat at your desk.Data Compression: This function makes the most of your internet connection. If you have 1GB of office documents (Excel, Word and PowerPoint) this data will compress to around 300MB, a 70% reduction in size means you can upload your data over 3 times faster.Block Level Incremental Backup: Once you have completed your first backup, only the changes will be backed up thereafter. So if you have 1000 office documents and only 5 documents change in a day then only the changes within the 5 documents will be transferred, again this greatly reducing your backup time. Open File Backup: Time is precious and you need to be able to backup files or application data which are open or being used. An online backup service can even backup Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SQL whilst users are accessing the application database. Web Restore: You can restore data direct from the online backup providers data centres without using the backup software. This is great for laptop users, if a laptop is damaged or stolen then you can restore data to your new laptop from anywhere in the world.Local Copy: The major draw back of online backup is you can only restore as fast as your internet connection will allow. If you use the software to create a backup to another location on your network prior to backing up offsite you then have the best of both worlds, local backup for speedy restore and offsite backup for total security.Flexible Scheduling: You can backup once a day or three times per day. It is up to you and whatever you feel suits your business needs.Email Reporting: Every time a backup takes place you will receive an email giving full information on what data has been backed up, what data has changed and deleted. The most important aspect of reporting is to let you know if a backup was not successful and why.Versioning or Retention Period: With versioning or retention policies you control how long you wish your data is to remain on the provider’s storage infrastructure. Usually companies like to keep the last 28 days data safe. This functionality is pretty useful if a file was deleted by mistake 2 weeks ago and needs to be recovered or if you want to see a document prior to the latest changes.
Online Backup, the Introduction
Every company owner or director who does not backup mission critical data is putting their business at risk. We all think it will never happen to me, but within the last 18 months there has been an unprecedented level of data loss in the UK. The main causes are natural disaster (flooding is at the top of this list) followed by hardware failure, user error, virus, theft and finally data corruption. If you do not backup data there is a larger chance of your data being lost than not. Online backup solutions will automatically protect your business data by despatching it to a secure data centre automatically.
An online backup solution puts you in control, via the backup software you state the data to be backed up and when. The backup software will then run in the back ground monitoring your data then at the scheduled time it will encrypt, compress and the send your data via your existing internet connection to your online backup provider’s infrastructure. Should a file be lost then you access your data and restore which files you need.
Understandable many companies are worried about sending their confidential data to a 3rd party to look after, especially via the internet. The key feature of any online backup service is the encryption process; no data is transferred until your data is 100% secure, therefore nobody can read your data unless they have access to your encryption code. Most suppliers can now even restrict restores to a specific IP address, so nobody will be able to restore unless they have your encryption code and are sat at your desk. As you can now understand, online backup is very secure.
The Fundamentals of Data Backup
For as long as computers and servers have been used for business processes data backup has always been around, it was not a sophisticated as it is today but still, backing up still took place. There was no online backup services available in those days so we all relied on various medias to store data each, with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages.
You could say to backup in any way is better than not to backup at all, and I would have to agree, however you must also consider the effectiveness and efficiency of your backup method. If you currently backup to CD, DVD, Tape or an external hard drive then the media becomes subject to the same potential disasters such as fire and flood as well as not so natural disasters such as virus, corruption or theft. Always move backed up data offsite, as far away from your working environment as possible.
If you do backup to DVD or tape media then it is best practice to employ the services of a secure data storage company to collect your data on a daily basis for safe storage. Whilst this is offers the best solution for local backups you will find this service expensive and can be a huge drain on employee time and resource. There have been cases where such a 3rd party collection companies have lost backup media, to lose this data is a serious issue, it may be an even larger issue is this data ends up in the hands of your competitor.
Online backup solutions do not need any expensive hardware such as a tape drive or DVD drives and is not licensed on a per server/computer basis. The only requirement is broadband or high speed internet connection and you can deploy the backup software as many times as you wish. You can schedule backups to run many times as required every day. Because the backup takes place automatically in the back ground you will never need to spend any of your time protecting data ever again allowing you to get on with more proactive business tasks.
How online backup works
Nearly all online backup software supports all major operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, All flavours of Linux, most versions of Unix (Sun Solaris, HPUX, IBM AIX, SCO) and Novel to name a few and will support all major applications (Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Microsoft ISA Server and more). As already stated, you do not need anything other than a high speed internet connection to backup your business data.
When online backup software is installed and configured it automatically schedules all business data, be it files, documents or complex databases to be backed up every night or when scheduled. The important factor is the restore features, not only can you restore your whole file/database structure you can also easily restore individual documents and emails at the touch of a button. It is an enterprise class backup solution that requires the knowledge of a novice to manage and restore.
Because of the traditional restraints of you internet connection the thought is when an online backup solutions back up for the first time is akin to filling up a swimming pool with a hose pile, initially it takes a long time for the initial fill (first backup) but thereafter you are only topping up (incremental backup). Most offsite backup providers are aware of this issue an allow seed loads. A seed load is where you use the online backup software to backup to a local NAS box or hard drive, once completed you can send you drive to your backup supplier who will transfer the data to their storage infrastructure. Thereafter you will only running incremental backups.
Even incremental backups will sap bandwidth, so all businesses will either schedule their backup out of working hours or will schedule multiple backups per day, thus reducing the amount of data which is backed up in working hours. The real benefits of online backup are that you can backup your data at the frequency you require.
Data Recovery and Online Backup
Backing up data efficiently and in automatically and secure fashion is fine but what about recovery? There is no point backing up your data if you cannot restore quickly. Online backup allows you to restore data in a multitude of ways. You can recover a single file or folder at the click of a mouse or your online backup provider will usually send all your data to you on a same day basis should you have suffered a catastrophic failure.
Additional Features of Online Backup
Online backup solutions are now the best fit for many businesses because of the features which make data backup as easy and as efficient as possible. It offers business owner piece of mind whilst freeing up employee time allowing increased productivity and business development.
Listed below are the common features usually associated with online backup solutions:-
High Level Data Encryption: This is the most important feature of any online backup solution. Before data is transferred to the storage centre it is a must that data must be encrypted to the same levels used by national banking institutions. 128bit encryption, Advanced Encryption Standards (AES) offers the best performance against security. If any higher level of encryption is used then your computers or servers will spend more time encrypting than actually backing up. The basic rule is it will take a high performance server around 9 years to crack data secured by 128bit encryption. A password or encryption key is required and data can only be restored by the holder of the key.
IP Address Permission settings: This option allows you to select who is able to restore data. It is another level of security, even if another member of staff obtained your encryption key; they would still not be able to restore your data if they were sat at your desk.
Data Compression: This function makes the most of your internet connection. If you have 1GB of office documents (Excel, Word and PowerPoint) this data will compress to around 300MB, a 70% reduction in size means you can upload your data over 3 times faster.
Block Level Incremental Backup: Once you have completed your first backup, only the changes will be backed up thereafter. So if you have 1000 office documents and only 5 documents change in a day then only the changes within the 5 documents will be transferred, again this greatly reducing your backup time.
Open File Backup: Time is precious and you need to be able to backup files or application data which are open or being used. An online backup service can even backup Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SQL whilst users are accessing the application database.
Web Restore: You can restore data direct from the online backup providers data centres without using the backup software. This is great for laptop users, if a laptop is damaged or stolen then you can restore data to your new laptop from anywhere in the world.
Local Copy: The major draw back of online backup is you can only restore as fast as your internet connection will allow. If you use the software to create a backup to another location on your network prior to backing up offsite you then have the best of both worlds, local backup for speedy restore and offsite backup for total security.
Flexible Scheduling: You can backup once a day or three times per day. It is up to you and whatever you feel suits your business needs.
Email Reporting: Every time a backup takes place you will receive an email giving full information on what data has been backed up, what data has changed and deleted. The most important aspect of reporting is to let you know if a backup was not successful and why.
Versioning or Retention Period: With versioning or retention policies you control how long you wish your data is to remain on the provider’s storage infrastructure. Usually companies like to keep the last 28 days data safe. This functionality is pretty useful if a file was deleted by mistake 2 weeks ago and needs to be recovered or if you want to see a document prior to the latest changes.
