Online Data Storage

Do I need to backup Office 365?

Recently, we have seen an increasing trend of users migrating to Office 365 , and while this offers users a beneficial range of services – long term data backup is not one of them.

It is a common misconception that data held by public cloud providers does not need to be backed up. Unfortunately, this is not the case, data held by cloud based services needs to be treated with as much care as that stored on local machines/servers.

In Office 365, any deleted files or emails will go into the recycle bin. From here yes, they can be restored - but with no search function that can be a laborious job. You also have to take into account that, by default, the recycle bin will only hold this data for a set period of 30 days before it is automatically deleted, and not recoverable. This can be an issue for business in specific industries where data legally has to be retained for a certain amount of years before being erased.

Office 365 does offer some archiving tools, while this is useful to have and can help when retrieving data for an audit, it is not meant to be used as data storage or a recovery system. Additionally, these archiving tools don’t cover everything, items like calendar dates and contact information are not protected.

Information stored on SharePoint, SharePoint sites or even OneDrive is not safe against accidental (or malicious) deletion. If anything from here gets deleted, it’s gone. Having a backup of the data that is used by these applications will help protect your business from a potentially serious data loss.

Public cloud based products do not usually come with their own built-in data protection, ultimately this is the users responsibility. And if they do, it is more for short term benefits, over the longevity of other data storage and retention solutions.

So, when deciding upon a migration to such services, we would urge you to strongly consider assess the backup solutions that are available directly or via a third party.

Top Data Storage Companies in the UK

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

AlbertEinstein

The above-mentioned quoted line as exclaimed by one of the most world-renowned scientists is absolutely true. Don’t you feel the same way? Well, with recent developments and technologies there’s nothing that is not available to make our lives simpler and happier. Gone are those days when you had to worry about making a call to a foreign land, send gifts to your beloveds staying overseas or maintaining books to enter all important data. Now, as days are passing the latest technology has come in our lives as a blessing. One of the most important technologies is the cloud storage services that have made the lives of the business owners simple. Now, you don’t have to worry about the important documents stored on external hard drives. It’s time to get smart and store all the important data on the cloud. I’m sure you know what cloud storage or online backup is. If not, then there’s nothing to worry as I’ll explain it to you in a nutshell.

What is cloud storage?

Cloud storage is the most recent and latest technological invention that has made storing important data effortless. It’s basically keeping all the important files on the internet that is the cloud. The limitless storage capacity of this new invention is not only accessible at all times irrespective of the place and time but also is cost-effective that has made this popular among the mass. Those days are gone where you had the chance to lose or misplace the crucial data because once you store your file on the cloud your worries can take a back seat. You have to try it to know it. Here are some top data storage companies that offer online backup solutions in the UK. So, keep reading to know more:

Safe Data Storage

Safe Data Storage is one of the leading online data storage service providers in the UK. If you’re one of them who likes to go green and save paper then you should get in touch with them right away and take the cloud services. Over the years they have gained customers’ confidence with their online data and image backup as well. So, get started with them now!

Nowadays, it’s wise to opt for online backing up of vital data due to its easy accessibility and limitless space. Store as much as you want but only with a reliable company.

Is your business’ data safe? Research suggests it’s probably not…

New research carried out in the U.S. has revealed that the majority of businesses who store credit card data using cloud storage are not doing so securely.

Information Management reported today that research by the company reviews aggregator Clutch found that over 60% of small businesses that use cloud storage for customer credit card and banking information were not storing this data securely.

Clutch’s research polled the IT decision-makers at 300 small businesses in the U.S. who currently use cloud storage.

In addition, the results showed that 54% of companies that store medical data do not do so securely.

By not storing this data securely, the businesses are breaching industry regulations on data storage.

In the U.S., this can lead to fines of millions of dollars and of course huge damage to a company’s reputation.

Keeping your customers’ data secure is crucial for any business

However, just as important – in the U.S. and everywhere else – is the need to protect customers’ sensitive financial information.

Being unable to reassure customers that their credit card and other personal information will be safe may lead to a downturn in business as customers will not feel confident giving you their data.

More than simply comprising customers’ privacy, having this kind of data unsecured leaves them at financial risk through the danger of fraud.

In the UK, with the new General Data Protection Regulation incoming, the need to ensure your cloud storage is secure and follows industry guidelines is also more important than ever.

Data breaches of unsecured cloud storage have featured heavily in the news recently. Just yesterday it was revealed that data on 123 million households in the U.S. was leaked due to a breach of an Amazon Web Services storage bucket used by a marketing company.

According to the security researcher who discovered the breach, the data included 248 fields of information for each household, meaning that “billions of personally identifying details and data points about virtually every American household” were made visible.

Safe Data Storage provide secure, fully-managed cloud backup services with extensive technical support. Data is encrypted and stored in two data centres, both based in the UK.

Your Halloween data loss horror stories

With Halloween just around the corner, we thought it was time for scariest type of surprise there is… data loss horror stories! We asked around the internet, in forums and on social media, for your worst data losses. Here’s what we found. Lock your doors and read on…

Enough to make a grown man cry…

We all know that data losses can have just a particularly devastating effect on businesses as the amount of data involved is often much larger than with individuals’ data losses. For small, local businesses, a huge data loss can even threaten their entire business’ survival.

“Data loss was responsible for the first time I saw a grown man cry,” Twitter user Jon told us. “I was a service engineer and had to tell a small business owner that his hard drive was dead.

“He lost all his accounts data going back forever.”

Stubbornness can be costly for business – very, very costly

“I’ve seen a business owner refuse to spend any money at all on a backup solution and lose 10+ years of data,” an IT professional and tech forum moderator told us. “And I see at least one post like that a week, if not more.”

Another user on a tech forum described a ‘sphincter-tightening experience’ in which he thought he had lost years’ worth of a client’s sales data after a computer malfunction. Luckily he had a backup, and was able to restore almost all of the data, only having to manually re-enter the last few months’ worth.

Many businesses have commercially sensitive data, such as information about their customers, products, or processes, that if lost and not backed up could have devastating effects for both company and customer. A significant data loss can set a business back by several years in its development.

But it can be just as devastating for personal data

“I had a 1TB external hard drive full of all my photos and other irreplaceable stuff and it got corrupted,” a Reddit user confessed to us. “I couldn’t recover everything so I lost all of my files.”

Your personal data can contain priceless memories that don’t exist anywhere else – meaning that without a backup, once they’re gone they’re gone forever. Is it worth taking that risk?

So, what can we learn from these horror stories? One thing is clear: ensuring you have a reliable backup of your data is absolutely essential in order to avoid risking your business’ survival or your school project. No wonder that, according to a recent survey by Advanced, a software company, four out of five business owners are considering using cloud backup data storage.

Make sure you don’t join the list of victims this Halloween…get in touch today to get your data safely backed up.

What the Facebook data breach tells us about the public’s attitudes to data security

In January we consulted our crystal ball and predicted that data – in particular the public’s data privacy, and large-scale breaches of it – would be headline news in 2018. What we didn’t expect was to be proved right so soon by the massive Facebook data breach exposé that has dominated the headlines this month. Feel free to ask us for this week’s lottery numbers…

Facebook users across the world are still reeling from reports that 50 million Facebook profiles were harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based data analytics company, in an enormous data breach for use in political campaigns including Donald Trump’s presidential bid and Brexit.

Facebook users’ ‘likes’ and other information on their profiles was used to target them with political propaganda encouraging them to vote for the candidates Cambridge Analytica was working with.

The effect of the news of the breach has been to make consumers more aware of their data and how it is being used. Cambridge Analytica’s data acquisition can be traced back to Facebook quizzes in the early years of this decade where users blithely granted access to their and their friends’ data in order to take part in quizzes.

Already, as a result of this story breaking, it’s hard to imagine Facebook users casually signing over their data to third parties en masse any longer without knowing how it will be used. Indeed, many users have left the platform altogether out of concerns about the security of their data.

For businesses who handle sensitive data about their customers or users, there is a clear lesson to be learnt from this: consumers are growing increasingly aware and passionate about their online privacy and how their data is used.

It seems clear that data security will become an increasingly important factor to consumers when they are choosing between services and products.

Of course, the Facebook breach has happened against the backdrop of GDPR’s introduction, which has been worrying businesses by itself. Organisations are required to be GDPR-compliant by the fast-approaching deadline of 25 May. Read more on GDPR on our blog.

GDPR gives individuals more access to, and rights over, their data and how it is used. It will force businesses to reassess what data they collect on employees and customers and the collection of all of this information is strictly necessary.

In addition, individuals have the ‘right to be forgotten’ if they object to some of the data being collected about them.

This is clearly a landmark moment for the data industry, with consumers awakening to the importance of keeping their data secure and organisations increasingly being held to account about their data practices.

Safe Data Storage provide secure cloud backup services for businesses, education providers and charities, giving you peace of mind that your data is safe.

For more information, get in touch.

The Importance of Cloud Data Backup & Storage

Why Do You Need Cloud Data Backup & Storage?

Cloud data storage is becoming more popular in all professional environments. As a nation, and in-fact a country we are producing more digital data than ever before. With this unparalleled growth it is unsustainable to continue to store data in tangible objects.

Many businesses, charities and educational institutions now utilise secure offsite data storage, becoming more efficient in the process. With an increased market shift to “the cloud”, there is a new wave of concern surrounding the security of data online. Online data security is even more relevant following the recent activation of the GDPR regulations. Find out more about GDPR and Cloud Data Storage.

UK-based Cloud Backup

You can sleep soundly at night, knowing your data is stored securely on our own servers. We own all our servers meaning your files, photos and data are not shared with any third parties or other businesses. Storage is split across our two data-centres located in London and also Bournemouth where your data is replicated and stored separately. Services are available for Single User Backup or Business Backup depending on the nature of your requirements.

Encrypted Data Storage

To increase the level of protection you receive, all stored data on servers is encrypted as standard. Data you backup with Safe Data Storage remains only yours and can only be accessed by you.

From the point of initial collection at your PC terminal or other device, data is covered by an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Following this, any connection between you and the server to access files and data is covered using a SSL 129-bit channel.

What this really means is that your data, what ever this may be, is converted into a randomised selection of numbers, letters and symbols. Without access to an encryption key, to unlock the data it remains useless and unreadable.

Backup & Restore

One of the most important features of cloud data storage and data recovery software is knowing you can avoid disastrous data loss. Across our servers files are stored in multiple isolated locations for prevention from complete data loss. Regardless of your industry or skill, no longer having the ability to access customer, sales and other forms of data could have a hugely detrimental impact on the service you are able to offer. Additionally, subsequent data loss from unsecured storage could pose significant ramifications under GDPR regulations.

It can be incredibly easy to delete the wrong file or press something you shouldn’t have. With fully backed up data you need not worry, your files can simply be restored within minutes – even for the less tech savvy among us. No loss, no wasted work, just peace of mind your data is in safe hands.

If you would like to receive more information about being able to backup on cloud systems and restore your commercial and sensitive data, or simply want to know the best service for your needs, get in touch with a member of our team.

Category Archives: Online Data Storage