A hybrid work environment – with staff partly in the office and partly working from home – creates security challenges that an effective and automated backup solution can reduce dramatically.

As vaccine roll-outs gather pace and the possibility of working from the office, rather than home, once again becomes increasingly likely, the potential for a hybrid model can be anticipated.

Such a model would be where employees spend time in both their home office and their work office location. After all, companies have become more comfortable with allowing employees more flexibility of choice in how and where they work.

Of course, it must be remembered that this means that a lot of important work will still be undertaken from home, and that computer hard drives can die at home as easily as they die at the office. Should the unexpected happen, it is imperative that no critical information or data is lost. Which is why businesses have to ensure that employees in a home environment have the same level of reliable backup as an office-based worker.

According to Nicolas Blank, group CEO at NBConsult, there are some vital things that are taken for granted in an office environment, but which are sometimes forgotten when a staff member is operating from home.

Not backups

“It is easy for an employee to forget that OneDrive and Dropbox are not backups. In the past year or so, many have learnt the harsh lesson that these so-called ‘cloud storage’ and ‘cloud sync’ options are not actual backups but are simply a live copy of current data. If this data is deleted or corrupted locally, the corruption will be synced to the cloud copy of the data as well,” Blank explains.

“Furthermore, it’s easy to forget that desktops and ‘My Documents’ are not safe storage locations. Thus, with file server storage no longer available to the home worker, they need a solution that solves all the above challenges by backing up the home users’ full device to the cloud.”

It’s clear that with the growing adoption of a hybrid work approach, the operating environment is becoming increasingly complex. For example, says Blank, the misunderstanding of the “sync versus backup” scenario can be exploited for nefarious purposes, while software and solutions may be bought that are not compliant or properly redundant.

“This is why it is imperative to talk to experts like NBConsult, as they are positioned to assist in ensuring that businesses operating a complex hybrid work environment can still safely and consistently do the backups required,” he says.

“Moreover, there are numerous benefits to be obtained from a hybrid cloud backup solution. Key among these is that your backups can be safely stored offsite. Perhaps even more crucially, this is the first step to compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act. And it adds a layered backup approach to further ensure proper, recoverable backups.”

It is worth noting, says Blank, that automation can be a huge boon here, as backups can be configured as “set-and-forget”, on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. Unlike backups that are undertaken by a human being, automated backups cannot be accidentally forgotten – they run on a set schedule, with no intervention required.

“Of course, the day-to-day maintenance and changes should be left for the IT solution to handle, rather than worrying the client. By making use of NBCube’s backup solution, companies can further ensure that the management thereof is the responsibility of a third party.

“Ultimately, using an automated and managed approach to backup provides resilience, as well as fast recovery from downtime,” says Blank. “It protects the company from the loss of critical data that can more easily be misplaced or stolen when employees work in a hybrid environment.

“Proper and effective backup also positions these businesses to more rapidly restore their capabilities in the case of an attack or a breach. This, in turn, helps to keep them ahead of their rivals and ensure they suffer minimal impact from such an event.”

For more information, please visit NBConsult.