The evolution of technology used to perform mission-critical data backups and support disaster recovery means that any sized organisation can be effectively protected, despite increasing data volumes and the demands of digitisation.

Specialists in data protection software and cloud solutions believe the emergence of the cloud and advent of cloud-based technologies offer businesses several options for protection.

Heidi Weyers, general manager, sales at Attix5 explains that the backup infrastructure has advanced significantly from the days of tape-based backup and unreliable external hard drives, thankfully for the user.

“Onsite backups were long seen as the only viable solution for securing and protecting data because of the time needed to complete full backups as well as bandwidth limitations, in addition to the complications that would often arise with backing up full copies of large data sets, while tape devices were more often than not the only medium available to store them,” said

According to Weyers, tape backup devices provided no guarantee in terms of the consistency of the data, while proving time consuming for IT engineers due to the manual processes required to run a backup. “At the same time they offered minimal, if any, security.”

Among the advances have been backup technologies that are pre-configured onto specifically developed devices, while other technologies provide software that work on a range of hardware or backup devices.

“A distinct advantage of these technologies is their ability to both automatically perform backups at specific times, while the daily backups are run incrementally, backing up only the changes to the initial full backup that was performed, and while this method of backup is available in many tape backup technologies, the restoration of data would often prove to be a time and resource intensive operation,” Weyers adds.

Attix5 believes that the ever-growing popularity of cloud based technologies, particularly in the backup and storage arenas, has seen an increasing number of organisations utilising these technologies to backup and store business critical data on numerous shared platforms – designed specifically for the purpose of securely housing backed up data.

“Many corporate and industry specific regulations, however, prevent business critical data from being housed on backup devices not owned by the company and not housed in data centres that are not located on the company premises, Weyers continues. It is for this reason that backup devices will continue to have a presence in the backup and disaster recovery space.

Weyers adds that organisations are taking advantage of the array of benefits offered by cloud based technologies “particularly when it comes to backing up business critical data, onsite backup devices will continue to form an important part of many data protection and recovery solutions.”