Most IT professionals perform ongoing security monitoring of their environments to catch security problems as they arise. But what happens if your monitoring tools don't catch a threat or vulnerability? Or, what if there are underlying configuration problems in your IT environment that invite security breaches? Continue reading
MSP pricing can, understandably, be a complicated affair – even for seasoned providers – since there is no standard pricing system that you could use as a guide. MSPs are now charging from as little as zero dollars for some services to as much as tens of thousands of dollars for selected packages. Continue reading
Ticket escalation is the cornerstone process of providing customer support. Improve your customers' experience by enhancing your ticket escalation procedures - and your customers will stay with you for years and bring you the referrals you need in order to grow and thrive. Continue reading
The “as a service” model refers to a solution, a platform, or a product that is provided and managed for an internal or external client by a third-party agent. This model is popular nowadays due to its flexibility and simplicity for the customer. You don’t need to find, test, and integrate the solution yourself; you just have to find a solutions provider, who will manage everything IT, leaving you with only the business-related tasks.
Needless to say, there is everything as a service nowadays, starting from analytics up to quality assurance. In this article, though, we will discuss why and how to implement backup as a service within an organization.
The backup as a service model, or BaaS for short, applies to backup management performed by a third-party service provider for its customer. Backup management typically includes:
The BaaS model allows an end user to delegate all data backup needs to a service provider, ensuring data safety according to service level agreements between parties. It's a perfect model for both small companies without an internal IT department, who can rely on a provider to perform IT routines for them, and for big companies who want to build an ITSM/ITIL-style relationship between their departments.
According to a study by the National Cyber Security Alliance, 37% of SMBs who have experienced data loss have suffered a financial loss, 25% have filed for bankruptcy and 10% went out of business.
With the number of cybersecurity attacks growing each year and IT infrastructures getting more complex, it is clear why organizations should employ the more user-friendly and convenient BaaS model. Here are more pros for it:
Further reading 6 Benefits of Backup as a Service
However, on the other hand, there are several challenges and concerns regarding the integration of the cloud backup as a service model within an organization. These factors need to be considered, so you can make a well-rounded decision:
At this point, you may be wondering how to find an external BaaS provider, or how to develop an in-house backup as a service solution?
If you are looking for a provider to do backups for you, contact several big companies on the market. They will be able to assess your budget and needs, define the proposition and outline the service level agreement. Together you should classify your data, and define the backup and recovery methods for the various platforms and operating systems you use.
If you are building an in-house BaaS solution, you should first define the needs of your business and establish your recovery point and recovery time objectives in order to find the appropriate software and, if needed, hardware. Thus, you also need to classify the data, choose the platforms for backup, and put together a backup and disaster recovery plan.
It's not always easy to choose a vendor that will provide you with backup as a service. If you are having a hard time picking one, here's a screening list that should help you:
If you have several candidates with greatly varying price points for a similar offering, find out why there is such a difference. Remember, the best choice is not always the cheapest nor, indeed, the most expensive solution.
Further reading 4 'Must-Have' Features of the Managed Backup Software
If you are looking for a ready BaaS solution for your own business, MSP360 Managed Backup Service will provide you with everything you need – a flexible cross-platform backup solution that is managed from a single pane of glass. You won't need to build a costly local infrastructure, as MSP360 is integrated with the biggest cloud storage providers out there and also provides you with local backup options for better data protection.
Sign up for a free trial of MSP360 Managed Backup Service today!
As convenient and user-friendly public cloud environments may be, they are hardly the place to store sensitive data or confidential communications. At the same time, secure cloud environments can come with a hefty price tag. This is why more organizations are turning to hybrid cloud computing, which combines the benefits of both private and public cloud computing. Continue reading
There are many data backup tools on the market, and they’re all capable of performing basic data backup operations. The key differentiators between generic backup solutions and those that go the extra mile, however, lie in the levels of manageability, reliability and support that these products deliver. Continue reading
The fact of the matter is that a complex backup procedure requires a solid backup plan. As it turns out, GitLab.com, a multi-million dollar company, learned this the hard way after losing more than 300GB of data through a failed backup procedure. Continue reading
Imagine that you get a call one morning from an end-user with a request to reset their password. The employee forgot the password or lost a mobile phone and now needs to set things up again. You routinely reset their password and thank them for the call. Later on that day, the organizational network has been successfully attacked, all their files are locked with ransomware, and you need to recover them as fast as possible. Continue reading
Businesses frequently turn to SaaS platforms like Microsoft 365 because they are convenient. They eliminate the need to deploy and manage software on your own servers. That doesn’t mean that SaaS solutions free you from having to manage security. Although SaaS providers manage some facets of security, they delegate many security-related matters -- especially related to data protection and security -- to their customers through a shared responsibility model. Continue reading
Some managed IT providers tend to avoid marketing activities. They believe that providing great services is enough to land new clients. While this is partly true, and you will see a couple of new clients a month thanks to your happy customer base, consisting of your friends and business connections, that's still not enough for sustainable growth. Continue reading
If you work with relatively small and few clients, data classification is easy: you need to backup everything, be ready to recover everything and all data should be secure. However, when you manage dozens of clients with hundreds of devices, it becomes harder to implement the same data backup, recovery, and security policy for all the data that your end users operate with. Continue reading
If you’re an MSP, it’s one thing to hear about what could go wrong with your customers’ data and infrastructure. It’s another to live through full-blown disasters like ransomware attacks and office fires. But these are exactly the types of disruptions that PC Wizard, a Connecticut-based MSP, has faced -- and conquered -- in its mission to deliver flawless managed IT services to its clients. Continue reading
