Online backup, off-site backup, remote backup… it’s a divisive issue no matter what you call it.

One the one hand, you’ve got the detractors claiming days of possible downtime in the event of a raw restore. Or they raise the question of security, and whether data stored in the cloud is really safeguarded from unwanted eyes.

On the other hand, you’ve got supporters saying it eliminates all the time and associated risks involved in creating, producing and storing (and sometimes transporting) physical backups. They also point out that the better online backup providers have far superior infrastructure and technicians, and therefore can better protect your business data. What’s more, they argue that a lot of data theft is caused by disgruntled employees working within the organization anyway.

It reminds us of the old days when some folks refused to keep their money in the bank, saying: “it’s perfectly safe right there under the mattress, where at least I know if someone’s trying to steal it.”

But if you ask yourself the following questions, the answer becomes pretty clear…

Questions You Need to Ask:

- How much irreplaceable data is on your business’s computers?
- How will you recover data if your computers experience major failure or damage, or are stolen?
- If you automatically back up drives to a local server or NAS box, how safe will data be if there’s a fire, flood or other disaster?
- Do you run the risk of losing the original and backup both?

Consider this scenario:

When a staffer working at the Joplin, Montana office of Certified Professional Accountant Nick Myers lost his laptop, key information stored on the hard drive was lost. Fortunately, the firm realized that it wasn’t being diligent in doing backups and quickly signed up for an online backup solution that would automatically do backups for them. When a tornado ripped through Joplin the next year, destroying the firm’s servers, computers and physical files (along with half of the city), data loss was the one thing Myers didn’t have to worry about.

Myers’ firm had been given a warning signal—and was smart enough to act on it. But what if it had put off the decision to switch to online backup?

6 Reasons Why All SMBs Will Be Using Online Backups One Day

1. An online backup solution means you’ll never have to worry about losing access to sensitive data again. More importantly, you won’t have to allocate any of your own resources—other than a small yearly fee. You don’t even need to know how to set up an automated backup system. You just download the client and configure. The entire process is done in less than 1 minute with just a few clicks.

2. For about $200 – $500 a year, your business can rest easy knowing its critical business data is protected from fire, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes… you name it.

3. And because the best online backup solutions use the same military-grade encryption used by financial institutions, you can be sure your data is being safegarded from prying eyes. Data can only be retrieved by those who have the encryption password.

4. Your data is further protected by being stored in separate SSAE 16 (previously known as SAS-70) and Tier 3 compliant datacenters in different countries. These datacenters have high-quality next-generation infrastructure, something few SMBs can afford to replicate in-house. Even if a natural disaster should strike one data center, your data is safely garded in the other.

5. These datacenters are monitored around the clock by highly-trained Microsoft certified engineers who have developed extensive disaster & recover plans and regularly test-run them. Because online backup providers store data for many companies, economies of scale allow them to afford dedicated technicians whose sole responsibility is keeping your data safe at all times, and ensure it’s recovered as quickly as possible—often within minutes.

6. With today’s high-speed internet access and military grade encryption, online backup is already the smarter choice. And as internet speed and encryption techology further improve, this proven method of protecting business data will simpy become a routine business practice.

Just like keeping your money in the bank.

How will climate change and the resulting increase in natural disasters change the way you run and protect your business?