Is your credit union considering implementing offsite backup services?

An offsite backup is a tool used to replicate your credit union’s (or any business’s) data and store it on a server or medium that is housed in a different location. While local backups are a good start, those backups stored on a hard drive or other media and are more geared toward protecting your data in the event of a small issue, like corruption of a single file.

Cybersecurity threats have been on the rise for several years, and the pandemic exacerbated that. Here’s why your credit union needs offsite backup.

Disasters & Storage Space

Your credit union is a financial institution that is dedicated to its members. That means the space in your branches and physical locations is better utilized when your data backups are housed outside of that location.

Offsite backups offer the benefit of keeping your office storage space to a minimum so you can house more staff members and member-inclusive areas like lobbies and private meeting rooms.

Storing your data offsite also means any natural or other disasters that affect your credit union operations will not affect your backups. Fire, tornado, hurricane, earthquake – your locations have their own specific weather threats that can disrupt or destroy data and data-housing hardware if all your backups are stored on-site.

Reduced Time & Cost

If you don’t have to pay for the technology that houses your data, and you don’t have to manage the backups, you can save time and money. That’s the beauty of offsite backup services.

You can outsource the purchase and upkeep of your data backup system by partnering with IMS to store your data safely offsite and to have it monitored and protected.

This also saves your IT staff and credit union managers and leaders time by removing some, if not all, of the data backup duties from their plates. Your credit union operations can continue efficiently and cost-effectively.

Increased Security

And speaking of protection, there are several benefits to offsite backup on that front, too.

Should your credit union or branch be hit with malware that affects your entire local network, your offsite backups are still safe. This can decrease the impact of things like ransomware and create great opportunities for near-seamless disaster recovery protocols.

You also remove the opportunity for human error by moving the data offsite. This way, files can’t be confused or stolen through employee error or malicious intent.

Offsite backups are disconnected from your main networks, so any issues you have with those networks will leave your backups completely unaffected.

Peace of Mind

Housing all your assets in one place is never a great business strategy, especially when those assets include sensitive personal and financial information. You and your members will be able to rest easy knowing that their information is protected in a data center with technology that was built to serve credit union needs.

Remote work and hybrid office spaces also mean that the availability of data has changed. Keeping all important backups in one place when your credit union may have people accessing it from unfamiliar homes and public networks has increased the chances of a malicious attack.

By incorporating offsite backup solutions into your business continuity and disaster recovery plans, you can ensure that the big disasters will have virtually no effect on the integrity of your data.

Cloud-Based Offsite Backup Solutions

IMS offers an automated, unattended backup solution that keeps your data from physical and virtual machines securely stored at an IMS data center.

Our could-based backup services are powered by Rubrik, the premier backup solution on the market. We provide fast and efficient backup that includes both on-premise backup and offsite replication.

Our Rubrik backup solution includes:

• Backup & recovery
• Continuous data protection
• Ransomware Recovery Replication & disaster recovery
• Virtualized environments
• Windows & Unix protection

Your data is the digital backbone of your credit union operations. And more and more people are prioritizing security and continuity in their banking and other financial service providers.