Cloud Backup vs. Local Backup: Why You Need Both

We regularly encounter businesses that believe they have a backup strategy when they have a copy strategy. There's a meaningful difference — and it matters most when you need to recover.

The 3-2-1 Rule

The industry standard for backup is 3-2-1: three copies of your data, on two different media types, with one copy off-site. This framework exists because individual backup methods have individual failure modes.

Why Local-Only Isn't Enough

A NAS or external drive in the office protects against drive failure. It does not protect against:

• Fire, flood, or theft: Physical disasters can destroy local backups along with primary systems
• Ransomware: Modern ransomware specifically targets backup devices attached to the network and encrypts them too

Why Cloud-Only Has Gaps Too

Cloud backup solves the off-site and disaster scenario well. The challenges:

• Recovery time: Restoring hundreds of gigabytes or terabytes from the cloud over an internet connection takes time — potentially days
• Cost at scale: Cloud storage for large datasets becomes expensive over time

The Right Answer

A layered approach: local backup for fast recovery of recent data, cloud backup for disaster recovery and long-term retention. Critically, cloud backups should be air-gapped or immutable — meaning ransomware on your network cannot modify or delete them.

Regular recovery testing is equally important. A backup you've never tested is a backup you can't trust.