The Hidden Costs of Inefficient Backup Solutions

Organizations require an effective backup solution to protect their IT environment. Companies need backup copies to safeguard themselves against deliberate or accidental data corruption or deletion. Backups are a critical component of disaster recovery plans. Businesses processing regulated information such as health care data may need to retain backups to maintain regulatory compliance.

The efficiency of a backup solution is essential in gauging its effectiveness and value. We’re going to look at what makes a backup solution inefficient and the potential hidden costs of this inefficiency. Then, we’ll highlight efficient backup solutions from VAST that protect your valuable data and avoid any hidden costs or problems.

Characteristics of an Inefficient Backup Solution

A backup solution can demonstrate inefficiency in several ways. Companies experiencing these issues should consider a new backup strategy.

Frequent missed and failed backups are a sign of an inefficient solution. Team members will need to spend inordinate amounts of time fixing these issues and ensuring the integrity of the backups.
Long backup times are typical in inefficient systems and may impact the ability to back up critical data regularly.
Slow restore functionality during tests or actual recoveries should be a concern.
Inefficient backup solutions will result in rising overhead and time to manage and maintain the process.
Insufficient security may pose a risk to sensitive backed-up data.
An inefficient backup solution may create large and unmanageable backup files that are difficult to use for recoveries.

Examples of Inefficient Backup Solutions

Once suitable for an IT environment, traditional backup solutions may exhibit inefficient characteristics over time. Organizations with the following types of backup systems should examine the benefits of a more modern and efficient approach.

Tape-based backup solutions are inefficient for most companies because they lack automation, require high maintenance, and are often plagued by slow recovery tim
Legacy disk-based backup systems may be inefficient for several reasons, including a lack of compression and data deduplication, resulting in excessive storage requirements. They may also demonstrate slow backup and recovery performance.
On-premises solutions without cloud integrations have limited scalability and are vulnerable to physical disasters which can destroy backed-up data.

What are the Hidden Costs of Inefficient Backup Solutions?

Organizations utilizing an inefficient backup solution expose themselves to hidden costs that can hurt business operations and pressure the IT budget. Organizations can avoid some hidden costs by adopting a more efficient backup solution.

Extended downtime

An inefficient backup solution often takes longer to recover systems after an outage or data loss. Extended outages of customer-facing systems can result in lost revenue and dissatisfied clients. Brand reputation can be damaged, and customers may look for alternatives, leading to lost business.

Employee productivity can also be substantially affected by inefficient backups. Extended outages and slow recovery procedures may make business-critical data unavailable to team members. Slow recoveries can also impact development as teams must endure long wait times when restoring test machines.

Increased storage costs

Inefficient backups, such as tape-based legacy solutions, can increase storage costs that pressure a company’s IT budget. Multiple costs are associated with a tape-based backup approach. These costs can be eliminated with a modern, cloud-based backup system.

Obtaining new storage media to replace damaged tapes and address growing data resources can be expensive.
Tapes must be stored under controlled conditions, taking up space and adding costs to maintaining an on-premises IT environment.
Companies need to store some backup tapes offsite to address disaster recovery scenarios. The transportation costs and offsite storage fees can destroy your budgetary plans.

Regulatory compliance issues

Companies must create backups of regulated data such as health care information to comply with regulatory standards. In many cases, these backups have to be retained for several years to demonstrate compliance. Inefficient backups expose a company to a variety of compliance issues, such as:

Failing audits due to failed backups or the inability to perform timely recoveries;
Being unable to recover regulated information after a data loss or disaster.

These issues can result in expensive fines from regulatory bodies and the loss of certification to process regulated data.

Security vulnerabilities

Inefficient backup tools may lack robust security measures such as encryption and multi-factor authentication to limit access to sensitive data. These vulnerabilities expose companies to cyberattacks such as ransomware and data breaches. Threat actors target backups which may have weaker security than a company’s production data resources. Hackers may use weak backup security to access the production environment and an organization’s valuable information.

Compromised data integrity

Inefficient solutions can result in incomplete backups and corrupt data. Critical data may be missing from backups, impacting system restoration and the ability of management to make informed decisions. Additional resources must be utilized to monitor and maintain the backup system, making them unavailable for more value-added tasks. Compromised backups can also lead to regulatory audit failures.

VAST’s Efficient Backup Solutions

At VAST, we understand the importance of an effective and efficient backup solution. We offer our customers a variety of backup solutions that efficiently protect your IT environment and its valuable data. VAST has your back when it comes to effectively protecting your company’s information.

Cloud backup-as-a-Service (CBaaS)

Our CBaaS offering enables companies to back up their data to the cloud efficiently. The service eliminates the need to maintain an on-premises backup environment and provides a streamlined and flexible recovery path. Your data is backed up directly to the cloud for enhanced resilience and efficiency.

Druva’s advanced backup technology is used to power our DRaaS offering. It offers a fully managed solution that can handle the complexities of any IT environment. Our services efficiently back up Microsoft 365, public cloud infrastructures, enterprise endpoints, and hybrid or on-premises environments.

Managed backups

Companies can use our team’s deep experience and let us manage their backups. We ensure the backups are performed consistently and reliably to protect your data. Organizations can focus on core business operations while our experts handle backup procedures.