Oh, what can go wrong? I’ll tell you what can go wrong real easy. You’re cleaning up your email and just start deleting them as fast as you can. Oh, no, there was some valuable contact information in some of those. Now they’re gone for good, aren’t they?
Not necessarily. Not if you have your Gmail backed up. You do know how to backup your Gmail, don’t you? You just... Oh, wait. Google doesn’t give you that feature. You need a special service like Backupify to backup your Google Mail data.
What services are backed up? They include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and Google Sites. What this service does is create automated daily backups with one-click restore. The account administrator can also initiate a backup at any time. What’s more, an admin can also export all the data in a user’s account. That’s handy when employees are leaving and you want to keep the data but not the Google Apps account itself. You may also just want to bring your cloud data in locally to work on it or have a “belt and suspenders” approach to maintaining backup copies.
How long is your data retained? Indefinitely, by default. You do have the option to set a retention period to match company policy.
You’re probably wondering just how secure this third-party backup system really is. All communications are over encrypted channels, typically 256 bit SSL. The data in the archives is encrypted at AES-256 or higher using a randomly generated AES256 bit key unique to each user. All the user AES keys are also encrypted with a master RSA-2048 private key.
Your data isn’t just being backed up to any old data center, either. This service uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Amazon offers an enormous and proven set of cloud computing services. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Amazon S3 is used as a cloud to backup the cloud. Amazon S3 is ISO 27001 and PCI DSS Level 1 certified.
Do you really like the way Google applications work but are a bit uncomfortable not having an independent backup for your business needs? Now you can have just that with ample storage and a very modest monthly cost per user per month. Best of all, there’s a 15 day free trial available so you can see if this service is right for you before you make it a part of your business routine.
