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Some devices have automatic data backup solutions, while others don’t. Last year ITPro wrote an article highlighting that 50% of UK businesses are risking data loss due to insufficient backup plans. That is a staggeringly high percentage. Almost four million companies in this technologically-advanced country have no data backup strategies. Many of these businesses are small, and data backup has never been at the forefront of their minds. Making sales and finding clients is the focus of small business owners — providing redundancy for data, not so much.

The Perception that Data Backup is a Low Priority

Many individuals and businesses alike, have been reluctant in implementing a data backup strategy, believing that it is a low priority, or for fear that it is too costly and challenging. As late as 2014, articles such as, e.g., The Guardian, were advising people to use network-attached storage drives (NAS) in order to backup their Windows systems. Users needed to buy SD cards, thumb drives, external drives, work with some offline data provider, and in the process spend lots of money for what a user might perceive as a non-pressing issue.

The problem is that hard drives, including newer SSDs (solid-state drives), fail more often than people think. Google and the University of Toronto released a joint paper in 2016 showing that “30-80 per cent of SSDs develop at least one bad block and 2-7 per cent develop at least one bad chip in the first four years of deployment.” Furthermore, with SSDs, usage doesn’t matter as much as age. An older SSD is still reasonably likely to develop problems even if it does not receive a lot of use.

Future Innovations

Given that there is a significant potential for data loss, and that historic solutions have been immensely complicated, it would seem that there is room for innovation when it comes to backup solutions. Fortunately, companies like Deep Blue Backup are following these latest innovative ideas and providing cohesive solutions to address your backup needs. Backing up your data is essential, but people seldom want to take time out of their busy day to actively manage and start these backups. However, there are critical technological advances that are coming down the pipeline which will help all users – individuals and companies – back up their data regularly. Let’s explore what the future of data backup looks like and how you can put your mind at ease, knowing that your data is safe and secure.

Software Will Handle All Of This For You

The critical adjective when discussing the future of data backup is “seamless”. Getting around the problem of having to configure your backup solutions to get something working and intuitive, is being solved by advances in backup software.

Ideally, software clients will be able to backup all your various data bits into organised buckets on the cloud. Clients will be able to handle multiple forms of data and assign structure to it. Your business MySQL backups will be automated using the same client that handles your Hyper-V backups. You can use that same software to backup your data as well. Software clients are becoming comprehensive enough that they can backup data types instead of just providing a folder somewhere on the cloud in which you put everything.

Security & Availability Will Be The Main Focus

You want to know that your data is safe and secure. In the age of ransomware attacks, image dumps, and other malicious invasions of privacy, your data will need to be encrypted and guarded once it goes on the cloud. Even companies valued at a trillion US dollars, like Apple, have had hackers crack credentials and steal private data (in this particular case, the hacker was caught and sentenced to 34 months in prison).

All cloud backup providers will need to put security as a primary, central focus to avoid embarrassing leaks and costly lawsuits. Encrypting all data on the cloud, making sure that logins are not easily compromised, and other security techniques will all need to be in place for backup providers.

Deep Blue Backup is committed to security. All solutions we offer have AES 256 bit encryption which would take millions of years to crack, even for the fastest supercomputer in the world. We take data security very seriously and ensure that all of our offerings keep data private and in control of the customer.

Backup Solutions Will Need GDPR Compliance

For businesses operating in the UK and the EU, compliance with GDPR is mandatory. As a quick refresh, the EU’s GDPR provides customers with significant control over their data and how it lives on corporate machines. Customers have a right to erasure which means that they can request that you delete any data you have on them. This right to be forgotten also extends to backups. If your MySQL database backups have information regarding a user’s posts, age, address, or personally-identifiable information, then you would also need to remove that data from your backups as well.

The penalties for not complying with GDPR requirements are incredibly steep and can have a crippling impact on corporations, both large and small. The European Union set out to create a privacy framework that had real teeth, and they succeeded with the GDPR.

GDPR & Solution Development

In the future, there will likely be more GDPR-like regulations that govern what companies can do with data. These will have implications on backup strategies, especially “do-it-yourself” solutions. A UK business cannot merely say, “I’m going to buy enough storage to backup my server every day for five years.” If they received a data deletion request, they would have to go into each backup and remove the relevant data.

As such, a GDPR-compliant cloud backup provider is essential to ensure that your business’ backup plans don’t accidentally get you into trouble. Deep Blue Backup is GDPR-compliant. With privacy and security becoming such a central focus given the ubiquity of technology, cloud backup solutions will let you seamlessly backup data in ways that are not only safer for customers but also safer for businesses. Businesses can have confidence that their data will be compliant with existing and future regulations, whatever those laws may be!

5G Will Enable On-The-Go Backups

Many of us work with devices that are always connected. Phones, tablets, and other ultra-portable computers often have SIM cards that can connect to cell phone towers, providing access to the internet at all times.

In the past, you typically had to initiate a backup from a wired internet connection or via WiFi. The reason for this was due to the size of the data. If you have 10 GB of data that you wanted to put in the cloud, it will take a lot of time to upload over a cellular connection (and you might run into throttling and other issues. That same amount of data might take a few minutes via a broadband connection. Therefore, nobody backed up data “on-the-go.”

With 5G rolling out across the UK, estimated download speed is 130-240 Mbps from day one, with theoretical download speeds reaching as high as 10-50 Gbps. Similarly, upload speeds will be pretty quick at 65-120 Mbps and may reach as high as 10 Gbps in the future. This technology enables backups to happen on-the-fly. Imagine shooting a 4K movie on your phone and your phone being able to save it both locally and save it to the cloud, all within a few minutes. 5G technology is enabling that type of instantaneous backup for both business and personal devices.

Seamless: The Goal Of Tomorrow’s Backup Solutions

The goal of data backup is to be as intuitive and seamless as possible. With robust software, near-impossible-to-crack security features, legal compliance, and on-the-go backups with 5G, we are quickly entering into a world where data backups happen promptly and safely. It’s a world in which you can shoot 1 GB worth of video on your device and have it uploaded to the cloud in minutes thanks to 5G. That video will be securely encrypted so hackers won’t be able to see it, no matter how hard they try. The video will also have the necessary tags and metadata to ensure compliance with a myriad of existing and new regulations aimed at protecting consumers. Finally, of course, robust behind-the-scenes software will make sure the video upload succeeds.

It’s simple, seamless, and intuitive. That’s data backup that all businesses and individuals can use.