3 Problems You can’t afford to Ignore about Cloud Backup

I am writing this blog to highlight three serious problems you cannot afford to ignore while planning your off-premise backup on the cloud. 

Google Drive, Microsoft’s OneDrive, and Dropbox are widely popular cloud backup services. Basic versions of these services are more consumer focussed, and less enterprise focussed. MSMEs try to use these services to back up their data on laptops and desktops. 

In their pursuit to fit these consumer-centric solutions to fulfill enterprise requirements, they tend to ignore three serious problems.

Instead of narrating them, I will explain some simple examples. 

Looking London, Talking Tokyo Problem

When you activate a cloud backup service on a user’s computer, you must select a list of folders in which the backup will happen. Here is the catch. Have you ever thought of what if the user saves data in other folders you have not selected to include in the backup? What if the user changes the list of folders itself?

In both possibilities, your backup will not happen.

You think you are the Boss, but you are not.

As an enterprise owner, you are also the data owner on the user’s computers. That’s why you want that backup to happen. And that’s why you subscribe to cloud backup services. Users may not be as serious about cloud backup as you are. You can only activate cloud backup service on a user’s computer. Then everything is at the user’s discretion. A user can pause the backup and even cancel the backup. 

Nonetheless, a user can swap your cloud backup account with a personal one. The height of the problem is you will not know if the user has done it.

1. Don’t tell anyone. And everyone knows

When you set up your cloud backup account on a user’s computer, users can access that backup account and share data with anyone. Your enterprise data is like a cake anyone can eat.  

You have no control over who accesses your business secrets, IPR, designs, drawings, cost sheets, and whatever. 

Is that so hopeless for MSMEs? 

No, there are cost-effective technologies designed for MSMEs. 

1. They can force the user to save data in designated folders for which backup happens on the cloud. It leaves no choice for the user.
2. They run in the background in invisible mode, and the user cannot pause, cancel, or swap it with another account.
3. They send a daily report on the status of each computer’s backup. So, you know it first, rightfully.
4. The backed-up data is in encrypted form and is not accessible to the user. The user cannot see it or share it. When required, only the admin can restore the data.
5. Such technologies can even segregate enterprise data from voluminous personal data. They take the backup of enterprise data only to save cost and bandwidth.