5 ways to create a risk and disaster management strategy in the Cloud

Cloud computing is all about uninterrupted service at a cheap price than traditional methods to power your IT industry. While Cloud can effectively help you in managing your monthly bills, it can also leave you lost in the cloud sometimes.

The biggest issues in cloud computing these days are lack of a perfect back up strategies for organizations and individuals.

Back up storage mechanisms for the cloud are still siblings in the giant world of IT industry. Back up in the cloud has become a costly issue and also a cumbersome one.

While automating daily processes is easier, backup plans and automating backups is not so easy. It requires more in depth knowledge of the Cloud and also extra investment to make it happen. Many organizations have the traditional IT guys to do their work but not in all cases they come in handy.

Based on our Cloud journey we have compiled some points on how to avoid disasters in the Cloud.

1. Make Backups of the Cloud, but not on the Cloud: Creating backups is a must to ensure your companies data and to obtain restore snapshots at critical times. The backups when save on another cloud or local machine help you maintain risks as low as possible.

Saving backups on the same cloud can make your data completely inaccessible when there is a massive outage in a particular cloud provider. So a better way to save it is choose another cloud.

Personally, I think the more effective way is to have backups on a local machine so that you and your company users, administrators can access the data even if the entire organization is offline.

2. Automation is the key to Cloud efficiency: Doing all the work through a command line and traditional ways makes you a hero but the fact is that with automation, you can save lot of time and energy. Automating helps you do things that are to be done at regular intervals of time without any user interaction.

Don’t except automation to save money. Automation needs software sometimes, which you have to obtain through paid licenses. Nothing in this world comes for free right?

3. Plan for a cost effective cloud, not a cheap backup plan: Choosing a cheap cloud is very easy, but don’t that with your backup plan/provider. Choosing the best industrial standard backup is the most effective way to make sure your data is available at all times and also to make it secure.

4. Secure your Back ups too, not only your data: Securing your server and data is very easy. Many users and organizations often don’t encrypt their backup data to prevent any security issues in future. Not everyone in your office is a good guy nor or the ones outside your office. Always encrypt your data in the best available format to ensure safety.

5. Hire efficient administrators who can actually restore stuff, not create them: Creating a good Cloud strategy is a good way to make sure your organization is in the right track, but making sure they can also restore everything to normal is a better way to pick the administrators.

Hiring someone who can only create but not fix it when needed leaves your organizations and data in unsafe hands leaving you ripe for security breaches. Make sure your organization data and website up times are monitored daily.

These are some of the ways in which you can actually manage risk and disasters in cloud computing. There are more automated ways and techniques that help you achieve more efficiency. We will cover them in our future articles, so subscribe to our newsletter.

If you have a better cloud backup strategy or idea, do share it in the comments below.