Backup for SMEs

An economical alternative to expensive DRaaS.

I had the opportunity to speak with Linus Chang, Founder and CEO of BackupAssist to understand the current and future state of backup and how it has evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Linus, resilience, compliance, and backup have gained importance during COVID-19. The challenge is especially hard for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises).

“We’ve known for some time that legacy backup systems are becoming less effective each day, as cyber-attacks increase in sophistication and target backup data in addition to primary data,” said Linus. “To compound problems, the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that traditional backup procedures, such as swapping hard disks, are difficult or impossible during a lockdown.”

The current options of traditional backup versus DRaaS (disaster recovery as a service) are hard for SMEs as they typically cannot afford DRaaS. BackupAssist ER strives to offer a DRaaS solution at a reasonable price point. The new software provides express recovery options that enable users to achieve fast, predictable recoveries of data and systems, and to perform recoveries both locally and in the cloud.

Backup software installed on Windows servers performs disk-to-disk cloud backup using Crypto SafeGuard which limits access to backup data only from the server. It’s able to identify access from other processes and block it. Monitor backup up data to see if there have been large scale changes to the backed up data, on a daily basis, which could indicate a ransomware infection. When anomalies are seen, admins are notified via SMS. A simple and straightforward interface protected backup.

There are three disaster recovery (DR) methods: 1) VM instant boot which reduces downtime to less than 2 minutes; 2) bare metal recovery; 3) download cloud backup anywhere. There are also three data recovery methods: 1) granular files; 2) granular exchange; and, 3) granular applications. This provides business continuity and data handling with the ability to recover data anywhere. Data is stored in an open format for easy portability. This solution can be 75% cheaper with a huge increase in resilience.

The SME market wants affordability, automated offsite backup with history, and retention. Most recoveries are local and need to be made quickly. They also want the ability to recover in their cloud solution.

Proprietary solutions require customers to pay for a sizable infrastructure. BackupAssist is providing enterprise-grade technology that SMEs can afford with a design that balances service levels and cost with near-instant RTO for local recoveries with the option to recover in the cloud. They save money with blob storage, deduplication, and compression.

Security is achieved via dual redundancy with backup onsite and offsite. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest while users maintain full control of their data. Everything is completely automated. No human intervention is required. Compliance is achieved by choosing the preferred storage including public and private cloud with major and minor vendors. Complies with data security (encryption) and retention laws.

Since COVID-19, Linus has seen a lot of interest from small healthcare practices, hospitals, education, and government institutions in all 50 states.