Offsite Backup

An Offsite Backup is a data backup that is kept at a geographically separate location outside the primary IT environment. It protects against local events that would hit production systems and backups at the same time – such as fire, water damage, theft or large-scale outages.

Classically, this is implemented via outsourced media or a second site of the organization's own, today predominantly as a Cloud Backup with encrypted transmission and storage. Three factors count in planning: sufficient bandwidth for backup and – often underestimated – for the return transfer in an emergency, realistic recovery times for large data volumes, and clear rules on encryption and storage location, especially for cloud targets.

Conceptually, the offsite backup is the “1” in the 3-2-1 Rule: the external copy that still exists even if everything is lost at the main site. Supplemented by immutability, it also becomes an effective protective building block against ransomware.