Data is the lifeblood of any business, yet it faces constant risks – from cyberattacks to accidental deletions. Having a backup is essential, but what if that backup itself gets compromised? Traditional backups can still be altered or erased, leaving you vulnerable. That’s why cloud immutability for cloud backups is a game-changer. It ensures your cloud backups remain locked and untouchable, so when disaster strikes, your business can recover quickly and confidently.
What is Cloud Immutability?
Cloud immutability means that once your backup data is saved in the cloud, it cannot be changed or deleted for a set period. This protects your cloud backups from cybercriminals, accidental mistakes, or intentional tampering. Even if ransomware infiltrates your systems, your immutable backups remain untouched, ensuring you have a clean copy to restore from.
Think of cloud immutability as a sealed vault with a timed release. Once your data is stored inside, it remains locked and untouchable until the set period expires. No one – not even you – can alter or delete it prematurely, ensuring that your cloud backups are always there when you need them most.
Why is Cloud Immutability Important for Your Business?
Your backups are only useful if they’re still there – and intact – when you need them. Unfortunately, traditional backup methods like locally connected backup storage, removable storage, and even regular cloud storage are still vulnerable to cyber threats.
Cloud immutability offers the highest level of protection that goes beyond regular backups by making your data completely unchangeable for a fixed period. It is the only method that can truly guard against external hackers as well as internal sabotage and administrative configuration errors.
Here’s why immutable cloud backups should be a part of every modern backup and disaster recovery strategy:
1. Protection Against Ransomware
Ransomware often targets backup files first, encrypting or deleting them to force payment. Immutable cloud backups make that impossible. Even if your entire system is compromised, your cloud backups remain locked, untouched, and ready to restore.
2. Protection Against Internal Sabotage
Whether it’s intentional sabotage or human error, internal threats are real. With cloud immutability, no one – including trusted admins – can delete or alter backup data once it’s written. No extra permissions or complex separation of powers required.
3. Protection Against Misconfigurations
Changing or misconfiguring cloud storage settings can cause backups, or even entire containers, to be lost. Immutability prevents this. Once properly configured, the settings are locked down, ensuring your backups remain safe from intentional malice or unintentional errors.
4. Investment in Long-Term Cyber-Resilience
With immutable cloud backups, you still get all the advantages of regular cloud storage: automated offsite backups, geographic redundancy, and scalable capacity. While enabling cloud immutability will likely increase your total cloud storage costs, the amount depends on factors like how much data you are backing up and how long you keep it locked.
For some businesses, this may represent a noticeable increase – sometimes up to 2-3 times the cost of standard cloud backup. But in return, you gain a level of protection that rivals enterprise-grade solutions: backups that are fully tamper-proof, ransomware-resistant, and ready for reliable recovery. For businesses that can’t afford downtime or data loss, the added cost is a smart investment in long-term cyber-resilience.
A Quick Note on Redundancy
While immutable cloud backups are powerful, they don’t replace the need for redundancy. Any cloud storage is of course vulnerable to the risk of vendor service outages (i.e. your cloud storage provider or internet service provider). Therefore, you should always follow the 3-2-1 backup rule: three copies of your data, on two different media, with one copy stored offsite.
How Can You Get Cloud Immutability with BackupAssist?
Cloud immutability is now available with BackupAssist Classic v14.0.4 as a beta feature, but only with an active BackupCare subscription. This feature ensures that your cloud backups are protected from tampering, making them a cornerstone of a strong cyber-resilience strategy.
If your BackupCare subscription has expired, now is the perfect time to renew and take advantage of this essential security feature. Don’t leave your business exposed – ensure your backups are immutable and always there when you need them.
Final Thoughts
Cyber threats aren’t going away, and data loss can be catastrophic. Cloud immutability gives your business the ultimate defense against ransomware, internal sabotage, and human error. With this feature enabled, your backups are locked, tamper-proof, and always ready to recover from any disaster.
And when paired with BackupAssist’s CryptoSafeGuard ransomware protection, cloud immutability gives you enterprise-level backup protection, without the enterprise price tag. If your data matters, lock it down with cloud immutability and rest easy knowing your backups are exactly where you left them: untouched, unbreakable, and ready when you need them most.
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