4 minutes read

In today’s technology-driven world, businesses and individuals rely heavily on data.

From critical business documents to cherished memories captured in photos and videos, the value of data cannot be overstated. However, data loss is a real and constant threat, whether due to hardware failures, natural disasters, or cyberattacks.

This is where cloud backup comes to the rescue. Cloud backup is a useful tool with many benefits. However, it can also present challenges. Here, we will discuss what cloud backup is, its advantages, and the difficulties it poses. Additionally, we will provide a list of best practices to ensure a successful cloud backup strategy.

Let’s first start by discussing exactly what cloud backup is.

Cloud backup is the process of securely storing data in a remote location hosted by a service provider. It involves transmitting data over the internet to the provider’s servers, where it is encrypted and stored for safekeeping. Cloud backup ensures that data remains accessible even if the original source is compromised.

Benefits of Cloud Backup:

1. Data Protection and Disaster Recovery: Cloud backup offers a robust solution for safeguarding your data. By storing it off-site in multiple redundant servers, it provides protection against hardware failures, theft, natural disasters, or other catastrophic events. In a survey by IDG, it was found that 90% of organizations use cloud services for data backup, and 53% of respondents stated that their primary use case for the cloud is data backup and recovery. (Source: IDG)

2. Easy Scalability: Cloud backup services are designed to accommodate growing data needs. Whether you need to store a few gigabytes or several terabytes, you can easily scale your storage space without the hassle of purchasing and managing additional hardware.

3. Accessibility: Cloud backup enables you to access your data from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. This accessibility is particularly beneficial for businesses with remote teams or individuals who travel frequently.

4. Cost Efficiency: Cloud backup eliminates the need for investing in expensive hardware infrastructure and maintenance costs. Service providers typically offer flexible pricing models, allowing you to pay only for the storage space you use.

5. Automated Backup: Cloud backup solutions often provide automated backup processes, reducing the risk of human error. This ensures that data is consistently and regularly backed up without manual intervention.

 

Challenges of Cloud Backup:

1. Bandwidth Limitations: Uploading large amounts of data to the cloud can be time-consuming, especially if your internet connection has limited upload speeds. Initial backups may require significant time and resources, but subsequent incremental backups are generally faster.

2. Security and Privacy Concerns: While cloud backup services prioritize data security, concerns about unauthorized access, data breaches, or government surveillance may deter some individuals and organizations from embracing cloud backup. Selecting reputable providers with robust security measures and encryption protocols can alleviate these concerns.

In a survey by Barracuda Networks, 44% of respondents cited security and data privacy concerns as the primary reason for not adopting cloud backup. (Source: Barracuda Networks)

3. Dependence on Internet Connectivity: Cloud backup relies on a stable and reliable internet connection. If your connection is unreliable or experiences downtime, accessing and uploading data to the cloud may be disrupted.

4. Cost Considerations: While cloud backup can be cost-effective for many, organizations with substantial data storage needs may incur higher costs over time. It is essential to carefully evaluate pricing models, including storage tiers and data transfer fees, to ensure the chosen solution aligns with your budget.

Best Practices for Cloud Backup:

1. Define Backup Strategy: Determine what data needs to be backed up, how frequently, and the retention period. Categorize data based on importance to prioritize resources effectively.

2. Select a Reliable Provider: Research and choose a reputable cloud backup provider that aligns with your security requirements. Ensure the provider offers encryption, redundancy, and compliance with data protection regulations.

3. Encryption and Data Security: Encrypt data before transmission and choose a provider that offers encryption at rest. Implement strong access controls, two-factor authentication, and regular security audits.

4. Test and Validate Backups: Regularly perform test restores to verify the integrity and availability of your backup data. This practice ensures that your backup system is functioning correctly and that your data can be restored successfully if needed.

5. Implement Versioning and Retention Policies: Enable versioning to store multiple versions of files, allowing you to recover from accidental deletions or modifications. Establish retention policies to determine how long backups are retained based on regulatory requirements and business needs.

6. Monitor and Track Backup Activity: Set up monitoring and reporting mechanisms to track backup activities, including successful backups, failures, and completion times. Regularly review logs and alerts to identify and address any issues promptly.

7. Maintain Off-Site Copies: While cloud backup provides off-site storage, it’s prudent to maintain additional copies of critical data in alternative physical locations or with a secondary backup provider. This redundancy mitigates the risk of data loss in case of a catastrophic event.

8. Regularly Update and Test Recovery Procedures: Backup alone is not enough; ensure your recovery processes are up to date and well-documented. Regularly test your recovery procedures to validate their effectiveness and identify any potential gaps or weaknesses.

9. Educate and Train Users: Promote data backup awareness and provide training to users about the importance of backing up their data. Encourage good data hygiene practices, such as saving files in designated backup folders, to ensure comprehensive data protection.

10. Review and Update Backup Strategy: Regularly evaluate and update your backup strategy to accommodate changing data requirements, business growth, and emerging technologies. Stay informed about advancements in cloud backup solutions to take advantage of new features and improvements.

 

Cloud backup offers a reliable and efficient way to protect your valuable data from various risks and ensure its availability in the face of unforeseen events. By understanding the benefits, challenges, and best practices associated with cloud backup, individuals and businesses can implement a robust backup strategy that safeguards their data and provides peace of mind.

Embracing cloud backup empowers you to focus on your core activities, knowing that your data is secure and can be restored whenever needed.

2 minutes read

Healthcare practices generate a lot of data. Patient records, large image files and films, and communication records take up a lot of storage space. While leveraging the cloud is proven to deliver positive ROI and many other powerful benefits, identifying the right strategy isn’t as straightforward as it sounds.   

It can be challenging for IT leaders to initiate a productive conversation with executives that truly examines the cost delta, risk tolerance, and performance objectives of a cloud design. Many facets of cloud computing aren’t widely understood, and in many ways, cloud computing is a moving target.  

Our IT experts created this quick primer to help guide decision-makers through the steps in evaluating the right cloud strategy for your practice.  

How Much Cloud Storage do I Need?

From what we’ve found with the hundreds of healthcare sites we work with, it’s likely your practice is probably already in the cloud at the appropriate level. (We can help you verify that.) The challenge is determining the right balance of having services onsite versus having them provided in one or more public clouds.  

While the public cloud’s utility-based consumption of services is promising, the reality is the cost delta for healthcare groups often means they need a blended solution.  

A blended solution (not a hybrid) uses a combination of local or private cloud servers combined with public cloud services where they make the most business sense. For the network connectivity, we advise our clients to use an SD-WAN product to improve reliability and leverage inexpensive connectivity options.  

Best Practices for Blended Cloud

Designing a blended cloud footprint for a healthcare setting requires strong knowledge of a practice’s business workflows. Based on the workflows, the list of requirements for security, flexibility, and business functionality becomes very clear.   

Here are some best practices to keep in mind when designing a healthcare-specific, blended cloud footprint. 

1.   Don’t try to be a data center.

A blended cloud incorporates a combination of on-premise services and cloud-based services. For non-cloud services, consider co-locating your equipment in a professional data center. Data centers and co-location facilities provide:  

• Reliability: offering redundant cooling, power and communication systems sparing you the CAPEX and space  
• Security: spreading spread the costs of strong physical security over many tenants  
• Scalability: permitting faster flexibility to scale up or down as your business needs change 

2.  Use cloud services like Nimble Cloud Volumes, AWS S3 or Wasabi Cloud Storage to capitalize on cheap storage.

For example, it’s possible to automate the transfer of old user data, old images, and even old mailboxes to the cloud where storage is a fraction of costs compared to similarly maintained and protected local storage.  

3.  Utilize cloud providers for proof of concepts that can be built and spun up and down very quickly while only paying for what your practice is using.     

4.  Audit cloud service utilization every year to ensure your organization still needs those resources.   

5.  Commit to ongoing monitoring.

Designate IT resources to continuously monitoring the ever-changing public cloud landscape and then systemically identifying things that make sense to move to the public cloud. We’re advising our clients to use public cloud storage and backup solutions data-contrast=”none”>.   

6.  Leverage SaaS solutions.

Solutions like Microsoft 365 free up time to focus on core business strengths, reduce long term costs, maintain predictable long-term costs, and streamline software audits.  

There’s No Silver Bullet

There isn’t a single configuration that meets the requirements of every healthcare practice. Using a blended approach offers the benefits of local control, more bandwidth, and security combined with the advantage of using the less expensive services provided in the public cloud.   

3 minutes read

IT leaders at healthcare practices face immense pressure to find the holy grail of technical footprints. They seek something cost-effective, secure, and that delivers optimal ROI. Compounding that pressure is the fact that, in the minds of many of their executives and investors, that holy grail is the cloud.   

Cloud computing is more than a trend; it’s here to stay. According to a research report by Global Market Insights, the size of the healthcare cloud computing market is on track to exceed $55 billion (USD) by 2025.    

With nearly 20 years of experience in healthcare IT, our team is deeply familiar with the technical environments and considerations for specialty healthcare practices across the US. The following are answers to some of the questions we get most frequently about cloud computing. For a more personalized cloud analysis, specific to your practice’s needs, contact our experts. 

QUESTION 1: “Should I be 100% Cloud?”

I’m a healthcare practice with hundreds of employees and multi-site operations. We use a cloud-based electronic health record, but still locally host several other applications. Should I be entirely in the cloud?

ANSWER:  

First, let’s establish a definition of what it means to be in the cloud and differentiate between public versus private clouds.   

Most commonly, when people refer to the cloud, they’re talking about virtualized servers running on hardware you don’t own with a multi-tenant configuration; this is a public cloud. In cases where you own the physical servers and host virtual servers on them, you essentially have your own private cloud. For purposes of this FAQ, we are not referring to “pure-cloud” applications that are delivered 100% via web browser and maintained by the software vendor. A few mainstream examples of those, in our client base, would be Athena Health or specialty systems like FlatIron’s OncoEMR.   

Based on the still-high costs of pure public cloud, our experts find that the best practice is to design a combination using both public and private clouds. Consider an appropriately-sized private cloud to run key production software that would otherwise generate large amounts of consumption-based billing on a public cloud like Amazon or Azure.   

Typically the ROI, in this case, is less than 24 months for purchasing enterprise-grade server hardware and hosting your own private cloud. There are many other use-cases where a public cloud makes a lot of sense right now, including for bulk data storage and disaster recovery. Consider services like AWS, S3, or Wasabi to capitalize on inexpensive storage and keep the size of your private cloud as small as possible.   

In some cases, moving certain applications directly to the cloud provides immediate savings in support and operating costs. Examples would include Office 365 and “Cloud Hosting,” another sometimes cost-effective option between a pure-cloud application and a private cloud.   

QUESTION 2: Private Cloud

Will I always need to have or host some hardware in a private cloud setup?

ANSWER: 

This answer will change over time as the costs of public cloud drop. Two of the biggest drivers of cost in using the public cloud for hosting production servers is the cost of the ingress and egress of data, so essentially how much data are you uploading or downloading or changing daily, and the amount of CPU processing power needed.   

Since most healthcare applications typically have high data change rates and use a lot of processing, it is often cheaper to host them in a private cloud. Still, we suspect this will shift over time, and at some point, it will no longer be advantageous to maintain your own private cloud.   

QUESTION 3: Managing my Cloud

How do I keep track of all of this?

ANSWER:   

The array of options available to healthcare practices requires specific expertise to build and maintain a plan that matches the business’s specific needs. Path Forward customers receive a quarterly business review and an updated minimum security requirements checklist. As part of this quarterly review, we provide a 24-month forecast of hardware needs for the internal private cloud, as well as recommendations for migrating to the public cloud cost-effectively over time.  

With the ever-changing landscape of cloud technologies and emerging cloud providers, there isn’t a substitute for doing your research and updating your plan at least four times a year!  

Have a question about your IT configuration?

If you don’t see the answer to your question here, drop us a line or use our live chat website feature. We’re happy to work with you to sort out the best blended-cloud configuration for your healthcare practice.