Metiix Blog Managed Backup Services

File Encryption

Encryption has been used for thousands of years with a very complex history. Cryptography, the study of encryption, is derived from the Greek word kryptos, which means “secret”. One of the earliest known uses of encryption occurred around 2000 BC where the Egyptians carved hieroglyphs or complex pictograms into monuments. The use of the inscriptions were used back in ancient Egypt for religious purposes, but also to record historical events, write documents of importance and document calculations such as the depth of the Nile River throughout the year.

One of the oldest encryption devices from back in the 7th century was a Spartan scytale. The scytale was a tool used by the Spartan military to send private messages during military campaigns. The sender or encryptor would write the message on a strip of parchment which was then wound around a staff. The message was unreadable until the receiver, who would have an identical staff, would rewrap the parchment unveiling the message. This may seem like a breeze to decrypt the message today, but back then most of the people could not read or write.

Modern day encryption has changed immensely since the early days. Today, we have computers that are capable of performing encryption for us. The use of computers is our primary form of cryptography since the human-readable encoding is too easy to decrypt. When backing up your data, encryption is important for security. Cloud encryption is a service offered by third party providers and encryption in use today is secure or “military-grade”. Most providers are able to encrypt data bfore it takes flight off-site.

Encryption is still as important today as it was thousands of years ago particularly when it comes to backing up your data, and especially if it will be stored in the cloud or with a third-party. Encryption is and will always be an ever-changing landscape.

Metiix employs encryption in all of our data protection services, let us help you navigate your options to secure your backup data properly.

Cloud Backup

Businesses of all sizes need efficient data protection that makes recovery secure, fast, and reliable in case of an unforeseen event. While it is important for every company to back up their data, protecting it off-site can make all of the difference in the case of a disaster. A durable cloud backup and disaster recovery solution will help ensure that a business can quickly get back to work after a disaster to avoid losing time, data, and perhaps more importantly money.

Failure events can happen at your home or office and your data could be gone forever. Natural and human disasters such as a power outage, server failure, fire, earthquake, or flood can happen when you least expect it. Having a disaster happen in your home or business has a very low-probability, but very high consequences.

Cloud backup is a strategy for protecting data that involves sending a copy of the data over a private or public network to an off-site server and storage. That way if disaster happens, your data is safe elsewhere. The server is usually a third-party service provider, who then charges the customer a fee for services.

Third-party cloud backup is becoming more popular with small businesses and home users because of its flexibility and convenience as well as its low cost and peace of mind. Most service providers ensure that protecting your data in the cloud is super simple and automatic with minimal interaction for a stress-free option.

With real-time cloud backup services you are able to restore moments before the disaster happened and your data is immediately sent off-premise in only a matter of minutes. For most business owners their disaster recovery plan is to have their data off-site, but to also be able to restore and run entire services and applications off-site as well.

Many small business owners don’t realize how important it is to protect their data until disaster strikes. Having a solid disaster recovery plan in place is crucial while considering cloud backup services.