Small businesses can get big disaster recovery benefits from cloud computing
14 June 2011 18:21:55
In the wake of a natural disaster, a small business must take a hard look around and find out whether it can continue operating. IT consulting firm The Art of Service recently stated that cloud computing backup systems can help make the answer to that question "yes."
The most important advantage granted by online backup, the company said, is that it creates a copy of the business' data that isn't stored on-site. This means that, in the event of a hurricane or tornado, cloud-based backup copies will be safely stored somewhere else, and not exposed to the elements as local tape or disk drives would.
According to a study cited by The Art of Service, the vast majority of small businesses suffering a serious data breach incident go under within a year. The severe consequences are due in part to a simple inability to continue operations after such an event, and in part to the loss of public trust suffered by such a company.
Other experts have noted that online backup's efficiency can be improved by only updating reserve copies of data that has been changed, rather than doing full-scale storage dumps.
-McAfee Cloud Security
