March 01, 2010

The top 75 online backup companies are grouped into 3 categories, namely:

1) Consumer - for the general consumers

2) Small Medium Business (SMB) - for small and medium businesses

3) Enterprise - for large enterprise corporations

The top 75 Online Backup Companies are determined mainly based on these criteria outlined in this article:

How Do I Choose the Best Online Backup Provider?

We also take into consideration news releases companies publish in the preceding month, server stability, reports from our mystery shoppers, our own reviews, user’s feedbacks, company corporate blogs, and more.

Additional recommended reading articles could be found in our Online Backup “Backup Basics” page.

To read our official news release regarding our top 75 online backup companies, please click here.

The USA traffic details of the top 5 online backup companies from each sector are found here.

The Top 75 Online Backup Companies for March 2010 are:

Note: Some companies might have products and/or services in 2 or more categories.

===========

* Social networking accounts (e.g. facebook, twitter, etc.) backup

Unless otherwise indicated, all above domains are “dot com” websites.

Do you have any feedback on these top 3X25 online backup companies picks? Are there companies listed in a wrong sector? Did we miss your favoured company? Tell us why.

Here are our reviews of online backup companies that have not made it to our top pick list:

1. HPUpline (Our Review) Online Backup (got out of business on March 31, 2009)

2. Dell DataSafe (Our Review) Online Backup

================

The following are recommended sites for Mac Online Backup (in alphabetical order):

01 - BackBlaze

02 - Background Backup

03 - BackJack - specializes in Mac only

04 - Carbonite

05 - Crash Plan

06 - DataDepositBox

07 - FireVault

08 - Idrive

09 - Mozy

==============

Click here for our directory

Click here to see the USA traffic details of the top 5 picks in each market segment

March 01, 2010

www.BackupReview.info releases ranking of the top 75 online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise; based on predefined standardized criteria, to help users select the appropriate online backup company.

Vancouver, BC, Canada - March 01, 2010 - BackupReview.info publishes the March 2010 list of top ranking online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise. The list comprises of 25 companies under each category, for a total of 75 online backup solutions, based on standardized criteria defined on its site. This standardization of selection criteria goes a long way towards enabling users select the right online backup service for their specific needs.

Since it started ranking the top 25 online backup companies in January 2005, BackupReview.info has been choosing its top picks from all three sectors in one basket. Based on the feedback from the industry players and its readers, the site has further categorized the top ranking online backup companies by sector. Under each category identified — Consumer, SMB and Enterprise - the top 25 companies are presented in order of their rankings. Where available, links to elaborate reviews of the individual companies are provided.

With hundreds of companies offering seemingly the same service, choosing the best online backup provider could be challenging. Users need a standard set of criteria on which to evaluate the different services and understand which one would suit them the best. Factors that generally play a role in selecting online backup service include service requirements such as: cost per GB, cost per PC or per account, security, speed (backup and restore), reliability, uptime, quality, customer service, accessibility and financial standing of the company.

The top 5 online backup companies, from each sector include:

• Consumer: Carbonite, Keepit, MozyHome, Backblaze and Dropbox
• SMB: DataDepositBox, Asigra, Vembu, SOSOnlineBackup, CarbonitePro
• Enterprise: Backup-Technology, Intronis, Storage Guardian, CoreVault and MozyPro

The complete list of the top 75 online backup companies for March 2010 is found here.

BackupReview.info’s reviews, daily up to date news, articles and monthly rankings of the top online backup services, are supplemented with the voices from online backup and data storage companies. The CEO Interview spotlight section features interviews with CEOs/VPs and other senior executives of online backup and data storage companies. The ranking of the top 75 online backup companies is the endpoint of dedicated research and hours of hard work on the part of our research team. Interviews with key personnel in the online backup and data storage industry, reviews, articles on backup basics and links to third party websites on the site, bring a 360 degree view of the online backup and data storage industry.

About the company:
BackupReview.info has been running since 2004 and is dedicated to serving the online backup and data storage industry. By providing all relevant information, BackupReview helps potential users make the right choice for online backup solution.

The site’s daily posts are published in 57+ other websites, including Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Faves, BlogMarks, Tumbr, and its complimentary blog. The complete list of sites, where BackupReview’s posts are published, is found here.

Feature highlights of the site include: Daily up to date online backup and storage news, directory of online backup companies, articles on backup basics, reviews of online backup services by its editors, and from other review sites, and aggregated online backup companies’ corporate blogs.

Real time Twitter tweets are also featured in the site for keywords: “Online Backup“, “Online Data Backup“, “Online Backup Review” and “Remote Backups” using Twitter Grid. RSS feeds are also available in the site.

For more information, please visit: http://www.backupreview.info/.

Contact:
BackupReview.info
editor @ BackupReview.info
http://www.BackupReview.info

February 01, 2010

www.BackupReview.info releases ranking of the top 75 online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise; based on predefined standardized criteria, to help users select the appropriate online backup company.

Vancouver, BC, Canada - February 01, 2010 - BackupReview.info publishes the February 2010 list of top ranking online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise. The list comprises of 25 companies under each category, for a total of 75 online backup solutions, based on standardized criteria defined on its site. This standardization of selection criteria goes a long way towards enabling users select the right online backup service for their specific needs.

Since it started ranking the top 25 online backup companies in January 2005, BackupReview.info has been choosing its top picks from all three sectors in one basket. Based on the feedback from the industry players and its readers, the site has further categorized the top ranking online backup companies by sector. Under each category identified — Consumer, SMB and Enterprise - the top 25 companies are presented in order of their rankings. Where available, links to elaborate reviews of the individual companies are provided.

With hundreds of companies offering seemingly the same service, choosing the best online backup provider could be challenging. Users need a standard set of criteria on which to evaluate the different services and understand which one would suit them the best. Factors that generally play a role in selecting online backup service include service requirements such as: cost per GB, cost per PC or per account, security, speed (backup and restore), reliability, uptime, quality, customer service, accessibility and financial standing of the company.

The top 5 online backup companies, from each sector include:

• Consumer: Carbonite, MemoPal, Keepit, IDrive and BackBlaze
• SMB: DataDepositBox, SOSOnlineBackup, Vembu, IBackup and Asigra
• Enterprise: Intronis, Backup-Technology, Storage Guardian, CrashPlan and MozyPro

The complete list of the top 75 online backup companies for February 2010 is found here.

BackupReview.info’s reviews, daily up to date news, articles and monthly rankings of the top online backup services, are supplemented with the voices from online backup and data storage companies. The CEO Interview spotlight section features interviews with CEOs/VPs and other senior executives of online backup and data storage companies. The ranking of the top 75 online backup companies is the endpoint of dedicated research and hours of hard work on the part of our research team. Interviews with key personnel in the online backup and data storage industry, reviews, articles on backup basics and links to third party websites on the site, bring a 360 degree view of the online backup and data storage industry.

About the company:
BackupReview.info has been running since 2004 and is dedicated to serving the online backup and data storage industry. By providing all relevant information, BackupReview helps potential users make the right choice for online backup solution.

The site’s daily posts are published in 52+ other websites, including Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Faves, BlogMarks, Tumbr, and its complimentary blog. The complete list of sites, where BackupReview’s posts are published, is found here.

Feature highlights of the site include: Daily up to date online backup and storage news, directory of online backup companies, articles on backup basics, reviews of online backup services by its editors, and from other review sites, and aggregated online backup companies’ corporate blogs.

Real time Twitter tweets are also featured in the site for keywords: “Online Backup“, “Online Data Backup“, “Online Backup Review” and “Remote Backups” using Twitter Grid. RSS feeds are also available in the site.

For more information, please visit: http://www.backupreview.info/.

Contact:
BackupReview.info
editor @ BackupReview.info
http://www.BackupReview.info

February 01, 2010

The top 75 online backup companies are grouped into 3 categories, namely:

1) Consumer - for the general consumers

2) Small Medium Business (SMB) - for small and medium businesses

3) Enterprise - for large enterprise corporations

The top 75 Online Backup Companies are determined mainly based on these criteria outlined in this article:

How Do I Choose the Best Online Backup Provider?

We also take into consideration news releases companies publish in the preceding month, server stability, reports from our mystery shoppers, our own reviews, user’s feedbacks, company corporate blogs, and more.

Additional recommended reading articles could be found in our Online Backup “Backup Basics” page.

To read our official news release regarding our top 75 online backup companies, please click here.

The USA traffic details of the top 5 online backup companies from each sector are found here.

The Top 75 Online Backup Companies for February 2010 are:

Note: Some companies might have products and/or services in 2 or more categories.

===========

* Social networking accounts (e.g. facebook, twitter, etc.) backup

Unless otherwise indicated, all above domains are “dot com” websites.

Do you have any feedback on these top 3X25 online backup companies picks? Are there companies listed in a wrong sector? Did we miss your favoured company? Tell us why.

Here are our reviews of online backup companies that have not made it to our top pick list:

1. HPUpline (Our Review) Online Backup (got out of business on March 31, 2009)

2. Dell DataSafe (Our Review) Online Backup

================

The following are recommended sites for Mac Online Backup (in alphabetical order):

01 - BackBlaze

02 - Background Backup

03 - BackJack - specializes in Mac only

04 - Carbonite

05 - Crash Plan

06 - DataDepositBox

07 - FireVault

08 - Idrive

09 - MemoPal

10 - Mozy

==============

Click here for our directory

Click here to see the USA traffic details of the top 5 picks in each market segment

January 01, 2010

www.BackupReview.info releases ranking of the top 75 online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise; based on predefined standardized criteria, to help users select the appropriate online backup company.

Vancouver, BC, Canada - January 01, 2010 - BackupReview.info publishes the January 2010 list of top ranking online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise. The list comprises of 25 companies under each category, for a total of 75 online backup solutions, based on standardized criteria defined on its site. This standardization of selection criteria goes a long way towards enabling users select the right online backup service for their specific needs.

Since it started ranking the top 25 online backup companies in January 2005, BackupReview.info has been choosing its top picks from all three sectors in one basket. Based on the feedback from the industry players and its readers, the site has further categorized the top ranking online backup companies by sector. Under each category identified — Consumer, SMB and Enterprise - the top 25 companies are presented in order of their rankings. Where available, links to elaborate reviews of the individual companies are provided.

With hundreds of companies offering seemingly the same service, choosing the best online backup provider could be challenging. Users need a standard set of criteria on which to evaluate the different services and understand which one would suit them the best. Factors that generally play a role in selecting online backup service include service requirements such as: cost per GB, cost per PC or per account, security, speed (backup and restore), reliability, uptime, quality, customer service, accessibility and financial standing of the company.

The top 5 online backup companies, from each sector include:

• Consumer: Carbonite, MemoPal, Keepit, IDrive and BackBlaze
• SMB: DataDepositBox, SOSOnlineBackup, Vembu, IBackup and Asigra
• Enterprise: Intronis, Backup-Technology, Storage Guardian, CrashPlan and MozyPro

The complete list of the top 75 online backup companies for January 2010 is found here.

BackupReview.info’s reviews, daily up to date news, articles and monthly rankings of the top online backup services, are supplemented with the voices from online backup and data storage companies. The CEO Interview spotlight section features interviews with CEOs/VPs and other senior executives of online backup and data storage companies. The ranking of the top 75 online backup companies is the endpoint of dedicated research and hours of hard work on the part of our research team. Interviews with key personnel in the online backup and data storage industry, reviews, articles on backup basics and links to third party websites on the site, bring a 360 degree view of the online backup and data storage industry.

About the company:
BackupReview.info has been running since 2004 and is dedicated to serving the online backup and data storage industry. By providing all relevant information, BackupReview helps potential users make the right choice for online backup solution.

The site’s daily posts are published in 52+ other websites, including Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Faves, BlogMarks, Tumbr, and its complimentary blog. The complete list of sites, where BackupReview’s posts are published, is found here.

Feature highlights of the site include: Daily up to date online backup and storage news, directory of online backup companies, articles on backup basics, reviews of online backup services by its editors, and from other review sites, and aggregated online backup companies’ corporate blogs.

Real time Twitter tweets are also featured in the site for keywords: “Online Backup“, “Online Data Backup“, “Online Backup Review” and “Remote Backups” using Twitter Grid. RSS feeds are also available in the site.

For more information, please visit: http://www.backupreview.info/.

Contact:
BackupReview.info
editor @ BackupReview.info
http://www.BackupReview.info

January 01, 2010

The top 75 online backup companies are grouped into 3 categories, namely:

1) Consumer - for the general consumers

2) Small Medium Business (SMB) - for small and medium businesses

3) Enterprise - for large enterprise corporations

The top 75 Online Backup Companies are determined mainly based on these criteria outlined in this article:
How Do I Choose the Best Online Backup Provider?

We also take into consideration news releases companies publish in the preceding month, server stability, reports from our mystery shoppers, our own reviews, user’s feedbacks, company corporate blogs, and more.

Additional recommended reading articles could be found in our Online Backup “Backup Basics” page.

To read our official news release regarding our top 75 online backup companies, please click here.

The USA traffic details of the top 5 online backup companies from each sector are found here.

The Top 75 Online Backup Companies for January 2010 are:

Note: Some companies might have products and/or services in 2 or more categories.

===========

Unless otherwise indicated, all above domains are “dot com” websites.

Do you have any feedback on these top 3X25 online backup companies picks? Are there companies listed in a wrong sector? Did we miss your favoured company? Tell us why.

Here are our reviews of online backup companies that have not made it to our top pick list:
1. HPUpline (Our Review) Online Backup (got out of business on March 31, 2009)
2. Dell DataSafe (Our Review) Online Backup

================

The following are recommended sites for Mac Online Backup (in alphabetical order):

01 - BackBlaze
02 - BackJack - specializes in Mac only
03 - Carbonite
04 - DataDepositBox
05 - FireVault
06 - Idrive
07 - MemoPal
08 - Mozy

==============

Click here for our directory

Click here to see the USA traffic details of the top 5 picks in each market segment

December 01, 2009

www.BackupReview.info releases ranking of the top 75 online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise; based on predefined standardized criteria, to help users select the appropriate online backup company.

Vancouver, BC, Canada - December 01, 2009 - BackupReview.info publishes the December 2009 list of top ranking online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise. The list comprises of 25 companies under each category, for a total of 75 online backup solutions, based on standardized criteria defined on its site. This standardization of selection criteria goes a long way towards enabling users select the right online backup service for their specific needs.

Since it started ranking the top 25 online backup companies in January 2005, BackupReview.info has been choosing its top picks from all three sectors in one basket. Based on the feedback from the industry players and its readers, the site has further categorized the top ranking online backup companies by sector. Under each category identified — Consumer, SMB and Enterprise - the top 25 companies are presented in order of their rankings. Where available, links to elaborate reviews of the individual companies are provided.

With hundreds of companies offering seemingly the same service, choosing the best online backup provider could be challenging. Users need a standard set of criteria on which to evaluate the different services and understand which one would suit them the best. Factors that generally play a role in selecting online backup service include service requirements such as: cost per GB, cost per PC or per account, security, speed (backup and restore), reliability, uptime, quality, customer service, accessibility and financial standing of the company.

The top 5 online backup companies, from each sector include:

• Consumer: Carbonite, MemoPal, Keepit, IDrive and BackBlaze
• SMB: DataDepositBox, Spare Backup, Vembu, IBackup and SOSOnlineBackup
• Enterprise: Intronis, Backup-Technology, Storage Guardian, CoreVault and CrashPlan

The complete list of the top 75 online backup companies for December 2009 is found here.

BackupReview.info’s reviews, daily up to date news, articles and monthly rankings of the top online backup services, are supplemented with the voices from online backup and data storage companies. The CEO Interview spotlight section features interviews with CEOs/VPs and other senior executives of online backup and data storage companies. The ranking of the top 75 online backup companies is the endpoint of dedicated research and hours of hard work on the part of our research team. Interviews with key personnel in the online backup and data storage industry, reviews, articles on backup basics and links to third party websites on the site, bring a 360 degree view of the online backup and data storage industry.

About the company:
BackupReview.info has been running since 2004 and is dedicated to serving the online backup and data storage industry. By providing all relevant information, BackupReview helps potential users make the right choice for online backup solution.

The site’s daily posts are published in 52+ other websites, including Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Faves, BlogMarks, Tumbr, and its complimentary blog. The complete list of sites, where BackupReview’s posts are published, is found here.

Feature highlights of the site include: Daily up to date online backup and storage news, directory of online backup companies, articles on backup basics, reviews of online backup services by its editors, and from other review sites, and aggregated online backup companies’ corporate blogs.

Real time Twitter tweets are also featured in the site for keywords: “Online Backup“, “Online Data Backup“, “Online Backup Review” and “Remote Backups” using Twitter Grid. RSS feeds are also available in the site.

For more information, please visit: http://www.backupreview.info/.

Contact:
BackupReview.info
editor @ BackupReview.info
http://www.BackupReview.info

December 01, 2009

The top 75 online backup companies are grouped into 3 categories, namely:

1) Consumer - for the general consumers

2) Small Medium Business (SMB) - for small and medium businesses

3) Enterprise - for large enterprise corporations

The top 75 Online Backup Companies are determined mainly based on these criteria outlined in this article:
How Do I Choose the Best Online Backup Provider?

We also take into consideration news releases companies publish in the preceding month, server stability, reports from our mystery shoppers, our own reviews, user’s feedbacks, company corporate blogs, and more.

Additional recommended reading articles could be found in our Online Backup “Backup Basics” page.

To read our official news release regarding our top 75 online backup companies, please click here.

The USA traffic details of the top 5 online backup companies from each sector are found here.

The Top 75 Online Backup Companies for December 2009 are:

Note: Some companies might have products and/or services in 2 or more categories.

===========

Unless otherwise indicated, all above domains are “dot com” websites.

Do you have any feedback on these top 3X25 online backup companies picks? Are there companies listed in a wrong sector? Did we miss your favoured company? Tell us why.

Here are our reviews of online backup companies that have not made it to our top pick list:
1. HPUpline (Our Review) Online Backup (got out of business on March 31, 2009)
2. Dell DataSafe (Our Review) Online Backup

================

The following are recommended sites for Mac Online Backup (in alphabetical order):

01 - BackBlaze
02 - BackJack - specializes in Mac only
03 - Carbonite
04 - DataDepositBox
05 - FireVault
06 - Idrive
07 - MemoPal
08 - Mozy

==============

Click here for our directory

Click here to see the USA traffic details of the top 5 picks in each market segment

Abstract

These days, personal and business data continue to grow, as a result, data backup and protection has become challenging for many individuals and businesses. Online data backup has become the preferred way of backing up data for many. Online backup companies are getting launched from all corners of the planet.

The increasing importance of online data backup (also known as remote backup) services has created a huge opportunity for online backup service providers. The industry is very competitive and many are entering the industry. Some have become household names with in a couple of years after they launched, some are struggling after many years in the business, and some have given up. What differentiates these companies? What are the challenges of this industry? Is it the lack of trained IT staff? Management? Sales people? Well-developed business plan?

What are the reasons why these online backup companies fail? Was it something that was unviable in the very conceptualization? Is it another bust, just like the dot-com bust? Does the online backup and storage business model not make sense? Can we trust the surviving online backup and storage providers to keep our data safely? What do the experts say? These are few questions that are worrying organizations and individuals, who have lost their data or are apprehensive of the possibility.

A number of online backup service providers have exited the market very suddenly, taking customer data with them. It would be remembered with bitterness that these companies invited people to store their data on their online servers with promises of anywhere, anytime access to data and extensive security protocols, mirrored servers and redundancy with geographically scattered multi continental data centers.

It is true that many more storage companies will disappear into the blue. Some will continue to grow. A few may consolidate to stay afloat. So, what are the factors that led to the failure of some of these online backup and storage companies? How can we be sure that the existing companies will not go bust? What is the future course of action? What are the backup options?

In this white paper report, we examine these issues in great detail and at a number of levels. We also provide possible checkpoints of evaluation of the surviving online backup service providers, and list points how to pick the best online backup service. In addition, our analysis has been augmented by a number of online backup and data storage company CEOs. The CEO’s answers are fascinating and to the point.

This white paper discusses the reasons why some online backup and data storage companies fail, and what existing companies must do to continue in business. The paper summarizes some critical steps startup online backup companies or already established online backup companies should do to stay in business in the areas of customer care, management and employee skill levels, pricing, funding, investments, growth strategies, sales and marketing, business models, positioning, attitude, and technology.

This white paper is a must read for all, whether you are an expert CEO running an online backup company or you are researching the online backup industry to launch a new service.

=========

Contact us to order ($$) this great 36 page well researched white paper at editor (@) backupreview.info.

Sorry, but we only accept wire transfers. No credit cards and no paypal transactions are accepted.

November 01, 2009

www.BackupReview.info releases ranking of the top 75 online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise; based on predefined standardized criteria, to help users select the appropriate online backup company.

Vancouver, BC, Canada - November 01, 2009 - BackupReview.info publishes the November 2009 list of top ranking online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise. The list comprises of 25 companies under each category, for a total of 75 online backup solutions, based on standardized criteria defined on its site. This standardization of selection criteria goes a long way towards enabling users select the right online backup service for their specific needs.

Since it started ranking the top 25 online backup companies in January 2005, BackupReview.info has been choosing its top picks from all three sectors in one basket. Based on the feedback from the industry players and its readers, the site has further categorized the top ranking online backup companies by sector. Under each category identified — Consumer, SMB and Enterprise - the top 25 companies are presented in order of their rankings. Where available, links to elaborate reviews of the individual companies are provided.

With hundreds of companies offering seemingly the same service, choosing the best online backup provider could be challenging. Users need a standard set of criteria on which to evaluate the different services and understand which one would suit them the best. Factors that generally play a role in selecting online backup service include service requirements such as: cost per GB, cost per PC or per account, security, speed (backup and restore), reliability, uptime, quality, customer service, accessibility and financial standing of the company.

The top 5 online backup companies, from each sector include:

• Consumer: Carbonite, MemoPal, Keepit, MozyHome, and IDrive
• SMB: DataDepositBox, Spare Backup, Vembu, IBackup and SOSOnlineBackup
• Enterprise: Intronis, Backup-Technology, Storage Guardian, CoreVault, and MozyPro

The complete list of the top 75 online backup companies for November 2009 is found here.

BackupReview.info’s reviews, daily up to date news, articles and monthly rankings of the top online backup services, are supplemented with the voices from online backup and data storage companies. The CEO Interview spotlight section features interviews with CEOs/VPs and other senior executives of online backup and data storage companies. The ranking of the top 75 online backup companies is the endpoint of dedicated research and hours of hard work on the part of our research team. Interviews with key personnel in the online backup and data storage industry, reviews, articles on backup basics and links to third party websites on the site, bring a 360 degree view of the online backup and data storage industry.

About the company:
BackupReview.info has been running since 2004 and is dedicated to serving the online backup and data storage industry. By providing all relevant information, BackupReview helps potential users make the right choice for online backup solution.

The site’s daily posts are published in 52+ other websites, including Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Faves, BlogMarks, Tumbr, and its complimentary blog. The complete list of sites, where BackupReview’s posts are published, is found here.

Feature highlights of the site include: Daily up to date online backup and storage news, directory of online backup companies, articles on backup basics, reviews of online backup services by its editors, and from other review sites, and aggregated online backup companies’ corporate blogs.

Real time Twitter tweets are also featured in the site for keywords: “Online Backup“, “Online Data Backup“, “Online Backup Review” and “Remote Backups” using Twitter Grid. RSS feeds are also available in the site.

For more information, please visit: http://www.backupreview.info/.

Contact:
BackupReview.info
editor @ BackupReview.info
http://www.BackupReview.info

November 01, 2009

The top 75 online backup companies are grouped into 3 categories, namely:

1) Consumer - for the general consumers

2) Small Medium Business (SMB) - for small and medium businesses

3) Enterprise - for large enterprise corporations

The top 75 Online Backup Companies are determined mainly based on these criteria outlined in this article:
How Do I Choose the Best Online Backup Provider?

We also take into consideration news releases companies publish in the preceding month, server stability, reports from our mystery shoppers, our own reviews, user’s feedbacks, company corporate blogs, and more.

Additional recommended reading articles could be found in our Online Backup “Backup Basics” page.

To read our official news release regarding our top 75 online backup companies, please click here.

The USA traffic details of the top 5 online backup companies from each sector are found here.

The Top 75 Online Backup Companies for November 2009 are:

Note: Some companies might have products and/or services in 2 or more categories.

===========

Unless otherwise indicated, all above domains are “dot com” websites.

Do you have any feedback on these top 3X25 online backup companies picks? Are there companies listed in a wrong sector? Did we miss your favoured company? Tell us why.

Here are our reviews of online backup companies that have not made it to our top pick list:
1. HPUpline (Our Review) Online Backup (got out of business on March 31, 2009)
2. Dell DataSafe (Our Review) Online Backup

================

Novastor doesn’t provide online backup service anymore. It has sold its online backup service division to Data Storage Corporation.

The following are recommended sites for Mac Online Backup (in alphabetical order):

01 - BackBlaze
02 - BackJack - specializes in Mac only
03 - Carbonite
04 - DataDepositBox
05 - FireVault
06 - Idrive
07 - MemoPal
08 - Mozy

==============

Click here for our directory

Click here to see the USA traffic details of the top 5 picks in each market segment

October 01, 2009

www.BackupReview.info releases ranking of the top 75 online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise; based on predefined standardized criteria, to help users select the appropriate online backup company.

Vancouver, BC, Canada - October 01, 2009 - BackupReview.info publishes the October 2009 list of top ranking online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise. The list comprises of 25 companies under each category, for a total of 75 online backup solutions, based on standardized criteria defined on its site. This standardization of selection criteria goes a long way towards enabling users select the right online backup service for their specific needs.

Since it started ranking the top 25 online backup companies in January 2005, BackupReview.info has been choosing its top picks from all three sectors in one basket. Based on the feedback from the industry players and its readers, the site has further categorized the top ranking online backup companies by sector. Under each category identified — Consumer, SMB and Enterprise - the top 25 companies are presented in order of their rankings. Where available, links to elaborate reviews of the individual companies are provided.

With hundreds of companies offering seemingly the same service, choosing the best online backup provider could be challenging. Users need a standard set of criteria on which to evaluate the different services and understand which one would suit them the best. Factors that generally play a role in selecting online backup service include service requirements such as: cost per GB, cost per PC or per account, security, speed (backup and restore), reliability, uptime, quality, customer service, accessibility and financial standing of the company.

The top 5 online backup companies, from each sector include:

• Consumer: Carbonite, MemoPal, Keepit, MozyHome, and IDrive
• SMB: DataDepositBox, Spare Backup, Vembu, Remote-Backup, and IBackup
• Enterprise: Intronis, Backup-Technology, Storage Guardian, CoreVault, and MozyPro

The complete list of the top 75 online backup companies for October 2009 is found here.

BackupReview.info’s reviews, daily up to date news, articles and monthly rankings of the top online backup services, are supplemented with the voices from online backup and data storage companies. The CEO Interview spotlight section features interviews with CEOs/VPs and other senior executives of online backup and data storage companies. The ranking of the top 75 online backup companies is the endpoint of dedicated research and hours of hard work on the part of our research team. Interviews with key personnel in the online backup and data storage industry, reviews, articles on backup basics and links to third party websites on the site, bring a 360 degree view of the online backup and data storage industry.

About the company:
BackupReview.info has been running since 2004 and is dedicated to serving the online backup and data storage industry. By providing all relevant information, BackupReview helps potential users make the right choice for online backup solution.

The site’s daily posts are published in 52+ other websites, including Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Faves, BlogMarks, Tumbr, and its complimentary blog. The complete list of sites, where BackupReview’s posts are published, is found here.

Feature highlights of the site include: Daily up to date online backup and storage news, directory of online backup companies, articles on backup basics, reviews of online backup services by its editors, and from other review sites, and aggregated online backup companies’ corporate blogs.

Real time Twitter tweets are also featured in the site for keywords: “Online Backup“, “Online Data Backup“, “Online Backup Review” and “Remote Backups” using Twitter Grid. RSS feeds are also available in the site.

For more information, please visit: http://www.backupreview.info/.

Contact:
BackupReview.info
editor @ BackupReview.info
http://www.BackupReview.info

October 01, 2009

The top 75 online backup companies are grouped into 3 categories, namely:

1) Consumer - for the general consumers

2) Small Medium Business (SMB) - for small and medium businesses

3) Enterprise - for large enterprise corporations

The top 75 Online Backup Companies are determined mainly based on these criteria outlined in this article:
How Do I Choose the Best Online Backup Provider?

We also take into consideration news releases companies publish in the preceding month, server stability, reports from our mystery shoppers, our own reviews, user’s feedbacks, company corporate blogs, and more.

Additional recommended reading articles could be found in our Online Backup “Backup Basics” page.

To read our official news release regarding our top 75 online backup companies, please click here.

The USA traffic details of the top 5 online backup companies from each sector are found here.

The Top 75 Online Backup Companies for October 2009 are:

Note: Some companies might have products and/or services in 2 or more categories.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all above domains are “dot com” websites.

Do you have any feedback on these top 3X25 online backup companies picks? Are there companies listed in a wrong sector? Did we miss your favoured company? Tell us why.

Here are our reviews of online backup companies that have not made it to our top pick list:
1. HPUpline (Our Review) Online Backup (got out of business on March 31, 2009)
2. Dell DataSafe (Our Review) Online Backup

================

Novastor doesn’t provide online backup service anymore. It has sold its online backup service division to Data Storage Corporation.

The following are recommended sites for Mac Online Backup (in alphabetical order):

01 - BackBlaze
02 - BackJack - specializes in Mac only
03 - Carbonite
04 - DataDepositBox
05 - FireVault
06 - Idrive
07 - MemoPal
08 - Mozy

==============

Click here for our directory

Click here to see the USA traffic details of the top 5 picks in each market segment

Published: September 9, 2009

By Jennifer Walzer, founder and CEO of BackupMyInfo, an online backup service provider

Jennifer writes about her small-business experience in a New York Times column entitled “A C.E.O.’s Journey“

Every business should have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. Unfortunately, because the idea of developing one can seem time-consuming and tedious, many entrepreneurs choose to go without one. Although it’s always best to have a complete plan, it’s better to have a few crucial pieces than nothing at all. So even if you can’t do everything, do something.

That’s what Len Oppenheimer, chief executive of the Golden Box, a provider of custom packaging to companies in the tristate area around New York City, did — just before a power surge in his office blew out a primary server. “We had started doing online backups literally three days before the server went down,” Mr. Oppenheimer said. “If we hadn’t had that safety net in place, I hate to even think about where we’d be right now.”

This guide is intended to simplify the disaster-recovery planning process by …

Click here to continue reading this article

September 01, 2009

The top 75 online backup companies are grouped into 3 categories, namely:

1) Consumer - for the general consumers

2) Small Medium Business (SMB) - for small and medium businesses

3) Enterprise - for large enterprise corporations

The top 75 Online Backup Companies are determined mainly based on these criteria outlined in this article:
How Do I Choose the Best Online Backup Provider?

We also take into consideration news releases companies publish in the preceding month, server stability, reports from our mystery shoppers, our own reviews, user’s feedbacks, company corporate blogs, and more.

Additional recommended reading articles could be found in our Online Backup “Backup Basics” page.

To read our official news release regarding our top 75 online backup companies, please click here.

The USA traffic details of the top 5 online backup companies from each sector are found here.

The Top 75 Online Backup Companies for September 2009 are:

Note: Some companies might have products and/or services in 2 or more categories.

===========

Unless otherwise indicated, all above domains are “dot com” websites.

Do you have any feedback on these top 3X25 online backup companies picks? Are there companies listed in a wrong sector? Did we miss your favoured company? Tell us why.

Here are our reviews of online backup companies that have not made it to our top pick list:
1. HPUpline (Our Review) Online Backup (got out of business on March 31, 2009)
2. Dell DataSafe (Our Review) Online Backup

================

The following are recommended sites for Mac Online Backup (in alphabetical order):

01 - BackBlaze
02 - BackJack - specializes in Mac only
03 - Carbonite
04 - DataDepositBox
05 - FireVault
06 - Idrive
07 - MemoPal
08 - Mozy

==============

Click here for our directory

Click here to see the USA traffic details of the top 5 picks in each market segment

By Lincoln Spector 

August 26, 2009 | IDG News Service

Your hard drive might crash. Thieves might steal your laptop at a café. You might realize on Friday that you desperately need the now-departed Wednesday version of an important document that you significantly altered on Thursday.

Your hard drive might crash. Thieves might steal your laptop at a café. You might realize on Friday that you desperately need the now-departed Wednesday version of an important document that you significantly altered on Thursday.

At times like these, having a secure, up-to-date backup of your hard drive can be a lifesaver. Here are seven practical strategies, including using USB storage, backing up via the Internet or through your local network, backing up Windows itself, and preserving huge media files like songs and videos.

What to Back Up

Your hard drive may contain hundreds of thousands of files. Many of them should be backed up every day, others only oc casionally, and still others–including temp files, the hibernation file (hiberfil.sys), and your browser cache–not at all. Let’s look at the different kinds of files individually.

Your documents: You should back up your word processing files, spreadsheets, and …

Click here to continue reading this article

August 27, 2009

Companies can minimize the potential impact of a natural disaster by taking advantage of Storage Guardian’s Jumpstart Cloud Continuity’ program. Limited offer for first 50 companies.

Toronto, Canada - August 27, 2009 - Hurricane season is officially underway. The season is now entering its historical peak period of August through October, when most storms form. Now is a good time for business owners and IT managers to review their current disaster recovery plan, says Dave Minns of Storage Guardian, the company that specializes in online and cloud backup solutions for small and medium-size businesses.

“You can minimize the business impact of a natural disaster with online data backup to an offsite location. And nowadays that means the cloud,” says Dave Minns, client services manager at Storage Guardian. “Companies with a cloud-based business continuity plan can recover from a disaster in minutes. And keep in mind that every minute you’re down is a major ding in your company’s credibility with customers, partners and suppliers.”

Storage Guardian’s ‘Jumpstart Cloud Continuity’ program: limited offer
Storage Guardian is making it easy for a business to implement cloud continuity by providing free initial data upload via USB drive for the first 50 companies that sign up. The USB drive eliminates the need to perform a time-consuming initial backup via the Internet. 

For more details on this program, go to: http://www.storageguardian.com/jumpstart.

Comprehensive business continuity protection has historically been something only large corporations could afford. The required investment in expensive, redundant hardware (both onsite and in remote locations) seldom provided suitable return or a 100% reliable restore of critical data. However, the advent of ‘cloud computing’ has made the provision of dynamically scalable and virtualized resources more available, including storage. Now, with Storage Guardian Cloud Continuity, even small businesses can quickly recover their IT infrastructure after a major disaster, ensuring their business doesn’t miss a heartbeat.

Cloud continuity is the latest approach to business continuity
Storage Guardian Cloud Continuity drastically reduces the operational impact of a natural disaster by restoring a single-server backup set from high availability storage to the cloud in just minutes. Users then have full access to all applications and data while the physical server is replaced, at which time normal operations can be resumed.

With cloud continuity service in place, a business can:

- Minimize operational downtime
- Continue business-critical activities while repairing its physical environment
- Gain access to restored data in the cloud from anywhere in the world
- Restore the data from the data repository into the cloud at LAN speed

Storage Guardian’s latest cloud continuity technology supports online backup and disaster recovery for virtualized computing environments (Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESX), and no hardware investment is required.

About Storage Guardian
Storage Guardian delivers business continuity protection and information lifecycle management. Storage Guardian is used by small and midsize businesses, enterprises, and multiple-platform LAN computing environments that want to safeguard their critical business data in a secure, off-site location. Its remote backup service is the culmination of a decade of intense research and software development and represents a superior alternative to tape-based data recovery systems. All Storage Guardian’s solutions are based on Televaulting technology from Asigra, a recognized leader in enterprise online backup. The company is also developing a select network of authorized VARs to service the off-site backup and fast data recovery needs of companies located throughout North America. www.storageguardian.com.

Press Contact:
Tim Cox
ZingPR
+1-650-369-7784
tim@zingpr.com

By David Friend, CEO of Carbonite

August 18, 2009

Having a backup plan in place to protect against IT infrastructure failure is crucial for businesses. David Friend, CEO Carbonite, looks at how SMEs with a limited IT budget can ensure secure off-site backup is implemented to avoid losing precious data.

The statistics are staggering: every year 43 per cent of computer users lose irreplaceable files. There are a wide variety of causes, including hard drive crashes, theft, power surges, natural disasters, or accidental deletion of files. Businesses need to be aware that losing the most valuable files is a very real possibility and the proper precautions need to be taken. The loss of business critical data can be fatal; operational downtime can cost a business thousands of pounds a day. 

All businesses operating with the UK are legally obligated to keep certain data record for a minimum of seven years   Not doing so could lead to a hefty fine or even prison sentence if vital data cannot be provided upon request.  However, even the most careful business owner can not guarantee they, or one of their workers, will not  misplace a vital email, or suffer data loss from a hard drive crash.  Up to 13 per cent of hard drives crash in their first year.

Data backup is not always a number one priority when running a business, especially on a limited IT budget.  So how can you ensure the peace of mind that your data is backed up securely?  One option is to implement an automatic online backup system like Carbonite that offers both the convenience of a regular backup routine and off-site data backup.  

How does it work? Once installed on a computer, online backup software runs in the background searching for new and edited files that are backed up to secure, offsite servers.  This data is then copied and double encrypted (for security purposes) before being transferred over a broadband Internet connection to the service’s remote servers.  To make this process as simple and unobtrusive as possible for businesses,  online backup can operate a ’set and forget’ policy.  Files are automatically backed up by the software, removing the time intensive manual element of backing up.  This provides employees with more capacity for business critical activity, eliminating the risk of human error hindering the backup routine.

Increasingly, SMEs are turning to online backup because any lost files are easy to recover, even if an entire hard drive of data is lost or destroyed.  Users simply log into their account, download the entire contents of their hard drive to a new machine and can start working again immediately. Restored files are even arranged in the same sub folders they were previously stored in.   Individually lost files can also be restored to the same machine they were deleted from, meaning files are always accessible at a moment’s notice from a ‘virtual hard drive’.  

Accounts can be accessed through any PC with an Internet connection, even when backup software is not installed, via web access.  If a travelling worker loses their laptop on the train, or leaves a USB stick containing a vital presentation in a cab, it can be accessed through any computer in the world and restored quickly.  

Many online backup services offer an unlimited amount of online backup space for an annual fee.  These costs, around £35 a year, are significantly less that the ongoing costs of acquiring backup hardware and operating an ongoing backup routine. 

In order to further minimise impact on business, online backup software can be set to automatically back up data overnight.  This means that backup can be carried out when a computer is not in use, reducing the impact on the machine’s processing power and ensuring there is no interference with the user’s computer usage.

Keeping a local copy of data is by no means a bad idea.  However, with online backup, data is stored on multiple disk drives making it 36 million times more reliable than an individual hard drive.  By backing up the backups, a business can double protect itself against data loss and ensure compliance with the law at the same time.

David Friend is CEO of Carbonite, an online backup provider based in Boston. More information on Carbonite can be found at www.carbonite.co.uk.

===========

The above article was originally published at SME Web

August 4, 2009

By Rob Cosgrove, CEO Remote Backup Systems, Inc.

I’m warning you in advance that I’m going to whine like a little girly, toss a fit, call you names, and blame you for a lot of stuff. So if you don’t want to hear this from a grown man who should know better, link away now.

I’m in the Online Backup business; Not as a provider of online backup services, but as a vendor of software and services for companies who, themselves, provide Online Backup services to end users. So I get to hear what kinds of lame excuses end users give them for not buying their services, and I have to try to figure out what to do about it.

The problem is (and now I’m speaking directly to YOU, Mr. and Ms. End User) YOU GUYS ARE IDIOTS! And here are ten good reasons why…

• You think $5 a month for backing up an unlimited amount of data is too expensive. Or worse, you think $5 a month is a bargain!
• You will actually trust irreplaceable data to a $5/month service! OMG
• Millions of you trust irreplaceable data to FREE services!
• You complain when it takes weeks to back up a terabyte of that crap you call music.
• You think all online storage space is created equal.
• You wouldn’t know RAID, RTO, RPO, FRP, or geographically distant mirrors if they bit you on your a**.
• Your Continuity Plan is…. Wait a minute… What’s a Continuity plan?
• “Charging $5/month for unlimited backups is a sound business model.”
• You don’t care that a half dozen cheap and free online backup services have gone out of business in the past 12 months.
• “The cheaper the better! FREE is the best. ‘You get what you pay for’ doesn’t apply to Online Backup.”

Guys, PLEASE wake up. These companies can’t afford to keep giving it away for free forever, and $5/month isn’t enough to stay in business, either. Back in the roaring 90’s we proved that giving stuff away for free while burning through millions in venture capital to build “market share” wasn’t a great business model. So now it suddenly is? NOT!

In the past twelve months we’ve seen a number of high-profile online backup companies with the same stupid business model go out of business, offering their users mere days of warning - not enough time to restore what might have been your only copy of the Director’s Cut of Stargate, you nerd.

You are so trusting. Look at you with those big unquestioning eyes, happily uploading your stuff to that company with the cute name, so sure that you’ve found the best way to back up your stuff - “And it’s CHEAP, TOO!” You are just adorable!

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was an online backup company that was founded by a cool dude who used to hang out with musicians and invent synthesizers. He had a sense of humor and was somewhat of a nerd, so he named his company after something he saw in Star Wars.

(He didn’t buy his software from me, but I forgive him for that mistake.)

This ex-hippie had to compete with an existing company that had a really cute name and sold its service for $4.95 a month, so he decided to do the same, which meant that he wasn’t going to make much profit on each sale, and he had to cut corners wherever he could, (even though he somehow attracted $53 million in venture capital, most of which went into advertising.)

Well, one of the corners he cut (and so did the competitor with the cute name) was in the data center. He figured that data stored in his data center for a mere $5 a month wasn’t valuable enough to protect with enterprise-level equipment and best-in-class storage procedures. So he bought a brand of cheap disk controllers that home users buy, and he didn’t bother to mirror the data offsite to another data center. He had no backup for the backup.

One day the cheap equipment failed under the weight of a million backups of Miley Cyrus pictures and songs, and a lot of data was lost. The ex-hippie blamed the disk controller people and sued their pants off to divert your attention, and his company got a big ole’ black eye in the media spotlight.

But you know what? The company’s sales were not affected when this story went public. Either you idiots out there did not do your homework before deciding to trust them with your only picture of you with Peter Mayhew, or you just didn’t care.

But whose fault is it? Well, it’s YOUR FAULT for not being willing to spend enough money for your backups so the ex-hippie could afford to buy descent equipment, and a mirrored data center (a backup for his backup) or some other kind of backup-backup.

If you really cared about your collection of 11,000 cornbread recipes from the 1200s to 1923, you would shop for backup services based on features, Service Level Agreements, and infrastructure rather than mere price alone. I PROMISE you, you will not find an online backup service for $5/month that can guarantee your data will be there when you need it.

Have a look at the web site for ANY $5/month backup service. Find the Terms, or the Service Agreement, or whatever it’s called. Read it and you will discover that by signing up for their service you are agreeing that they have no responsibility whatsoever for giving your data back to you. And how can they? For $5/month they can’t afford that liability.

At $5/month there are other corners that need to be cut, too. For example, bandwidth. Bandwidth is expensive, so they ration it. Your Internet connection may be capable of 20gb, but you can be sure you won’t be allowed to back up or restore at that speed. In many cases you’ll be limited to 128K. At that speed it will take days to back up your beloved Special Edition of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you empty headed animal food trough wiper.

All online backup services require software to be installed on your computer. It’s called a “Client” or an “Agent,” and it’s what does the work of backing up and restoring your files. The capabilities of a $5/month backup agent are worth, well, about $5. You get a cheap, virtually featureless bit of software that does the bare minimum.

Forget being able to set your own file retention policy. Don’t even think about backing up SQL Server, Exchange, Outlook email, Lotus, Active Directory, and System State. You can only dream about things like great tech support, strong encryption, automatic failover, HIPAA compliance, and hundreds of other really important big words you will never see for $5 a month; and you don’t realize you need until you really need them, and by then it’s too late.

Now, if you’re just storing copies of those snapshots you took at last year’s RealmsCon (you cosplayed as Gandlf and totally embarrassed yourself with Tifa Lockhart, remember that?) or other non-business data that you also have backed up on CDs, and you aren’t relying on your $5/month backup service to protect your only copies, maybe you can afford to risk the $5.

But when you grow up and need an adult’s online backup service that you can trust for your business data and anything else irreplaceable, I hope you look beyond price. I hope you realize that ESPECIALLY in the Online Backup world, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

I hope you are willing to spend enough money to allow your Service Provider to support you the way you deserve, with the resources and equipment that can guarantee your data will be back to you quickly when you most desperately need it; and I hope you select a LOCAL online backup expert who can actually be there when you need help.

And one last thing - the next time I hear you whimper, “But I can get it from XYZ company for fifteen cents a gigabyte!” I might just pull the trigger on this phaser, and then at least one of us isn’t going to whine any more.

Rob is the CEO of Remote Backup Systems, Inc., developers of the RBackup and Mercury Online Backup platforms, supporting more than 8,500 commercial online backup services in 64 countries.http://remote-backup.com

August 02, 2009

www.BackupReview.info releases ranking of the top 75 online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise; based on predefined standardized criteria, to help users select the appropriate online backup company.

Vancouver, BC, Canada - August 2, 2009 - BackupReview.info publishes the August 2009 list of top ranking online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise. The list comprises of 25 companies under each category, for a total of 75 online backup solutions, based on standardized criteria defined on its site. This standardization of selection criteria goes a long way towards enabling users select the right online backup service for their specific needs.

Since it started ranking the top 25 online backup companies in January 2005, BackupReview.info has been choosing its top picks from all three sectors in one basket. Based on the feedback from the industry players and its readers, the site has further categorized the top ranking online backup companies by sector. Under each category identified — Consumer, SMB and Enterprise - the top 25 companies are presented in order of their rankings. Where available, links to elaborate reviews of the individual companies are provided.

With hundreds of companies offering seemingly the same service, choosing the best online backup provider could be challenging. Users need a standard set of criteria on which to evaluate the different services and understand which one would suit them the best. Factors that generally play a role in selecting online backup service include service requirements such as: cost per GB, cost per PC or per account, security, speed (backup and restore), reliability, uptime, quality, customer service, accessibility and financial standing of the company.

The top 5 online backup companies, from each sector include:

• Consumer: Carbonite, MemoPal, IDrive, MozyHome, and Keepit
• SMB: DataDepositBox, Spare Backup, Remote-Backup, NovaStor, and Vembu
• Enterprise: Intronis, CoreVault, AmeriVault, DataBarracks, and Storage Guardian

The complete list of the top 75 online backup companies for August 2009 is found here.

BackupReview.info’s reviews, daily up to date news, articles and monthly rankings of the top online backup services, are supplemented with the voices from online backup and data storage companies. The CEO Interview spotlight section features interviews with CEOs/VPs and other senior executives of online backup and data storage companies. The ranking of the top 75 online backup companies is the endpoint of dedicated research and hours of hard work on the part of our research team. Interviews with key personnel in the online backup and data storage industry, reviews, articles on backup basics and links to third party websites on the site, bring a 360 degree view of the online backup and data storage industry.

About the company:
BackupReview.info has been running since 2004 and is dedicated to serving the online backup and data storage industry. By providing all relevant information, BackupReview helps potential users make the right choice for online backup solution.

The site’s daily posts are published in 52+ other websites, including Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Faves, BlogMarks, Tumbr, and its complimentary blog. The complete list of sites, where BackupReview’s posts are published, is found here.

Feature highlights of the site include: Daily up to date online backup and storage news, directory of online backup companies, articles on backup basics, reviews of online backup services by its editors, and from other review sites, and aggregated online backup companies’ corporate blogs.

Real time Twitter tweets are also featured in the site for keywords: “Online Backup“, “Online Data Backup“, “Online Backup Review” and “Remote Backups” using Twitter Grid. RSS feeds are also available in the site.

For more information, please visit: http://www.backupreview.info/.

Contact:
BackupReview.info
editor @ BackupReview.info
http://www.BackupReview.info

By Jennifer Cyrs (Consultant for Intronis Online Backup)
jcyrs@comcast.net
978-387-3474

Introduction

With the threat of data breaches growing at an exponential rate, the importance of proper data protection has never been greater. One of the most effective ways to ensure data security is through encryption. This is particularly important in online backup and recovery.

Encryption is the conversion of data from plain text into a format called ciphertext that cannot be understood by unauthorized people. Decryption is the process of converting encrypted data back into its original form so it can be understood. In order to decrypt the contents of an encrypted message, a decryption key must be used. The key is simply an algorithm that reverses the encryption algorithm. In general, the stronger the cipher, the harder it will be for someone to break it and access unauthorized data.

Why Data Encryption is Important in Online Backup

One of the most important components of an online backup and recovery system is encryption. By using a solution that includes strong encryption technology, you ensure that your sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access, both during storage and in transit. Even if your data were to become compromised during the backup or recovery process, it would be useless to an unauthorized user if it is encrypted.

AES Encryption

To safeguard data while it is in storage on your computer and before it is transmitted to a remotebackup facility, strong encryption should always be used. AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is a symmetric key encryption standard that was adopted by the U.S. government in 2001. AES provides strong encryption and is considered secure enough to protect classified information designated as “top secret” by the U.S. government. There has never been a successful attack against AES encryption.

The AES algorithm uses one of three cipher key strengths: a 128-, 192-, or 256-bit encryption. Each increasing key size provides a larger number of bits with which the data can be scrambled, and also increases the complexity of the cipher algorithm. 128 AES bit encryption is used in most online banking applications, but 256 AES bit encryption provides even greater security and is the preferred encryption method for secure online backup and recovery systems.

Blowfish is an encryption method that was invented by cryptographer Bruce Schneier. It was designed as a general-purpose algorithm and intended as a replacement for the aging DES (Data Encryption Standard). The algorithm is available on the public domain and can be used by anyone. Although Blowfish is considered a good encryption method, 256 AES requires less memory and is generally accepted as the most tested and secure encryption algorithm available.

SSL Technology

When encrypted data from an online backup system is transmitted to the offsite storage location, it’s critical that the data remain protected by using an encrypted connection such as SSL (SecureSocket Layer) technology. SSL is a communications protocol that provides security and data integrity for information being transmitted over TCP/IP networks such as the Internet. SSL is the same technology used when a web browser enters a secured Internet site. Without SSL, hackers could easily intercept and view data transmitted over the Internet. When selecting a secure onlinebackup system, you want to make sure that your data is being encrypted twice - once before it leaves your computer using 256-bit AES encryption and then again via SSL while it’s being sent over the Internet.

Encryption Keys

Once the data is on the backup provider’s remote server, you need to ensure that it remains encrypted. That’s why it’s important that your files can be accessed via a unique encryption key that only you have. Not even personnel from the online backup provider should be able to access your data. Since only you have access to the encryption key, it’s critical to safeguard the key in two secure locations - one locally and one off-site. Without the key, you will not be able to recover your own data.

New Data Encryption Mandates

As data privacy and identity theft continue to be a major concern for businesses worldwide, new data protection laws have been enacted that mandate how organizations should safeguard sensitive and personal information. Both Massachusetts and Nevada recently passed new data encryption laws that require all personally identifiable information to be secure when exchanged online. Other states are expected to follow suit.

These new encryption regulations are more stringent than the existing data breach notification laws that are currently in effect in more than 40 states. The existing laws only require businesses to notify people whose personal information has already been lost. They do not have any measures in place to prevent a breach from happening in the first place. The new encryption laws are more proactive and will set a standard so that individuals whose private information has been breached will be able to argue in a civil suit that the business that lost their data was negligent.

When selecting an online backup and recovery solution, it’s vital to find a solution that has strong encryption technology that can seamlessly comply with these new encryption laws and other similar mandates designed to protect sensitive data.

Military-Level Data Protection

Your data is encrypted before it leaves your computer using 256 bit AES security which is the same security used by the U.S. military. 256 bit AES security is one of the most reliable algorithms used today and has been proven to be even more effective than other encryption methods such as 128-bit AES or Blowfish.

Planning Your Online Backup and Recovery Strategy

As businesses look to store more and more information online and regulations for protecting sensitive data become increasingly complex, it’s critical that organizations use an online backupand recovery solution that has the strongest encryption technology available. The application must be able encrypt your data while it’s on your computer, during transmission, and while it’s stored on the servers of your online backup provider. To meet these challenges and to safeguard the lifeblood of your business, you need an automatic offsite backup and recovery solution that will protect your data utilizing the most up to date security protocols.

=============

Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Intronis, eSureIT, and Intelliblox are trademarks of Intronis Technologies. Allother marks are the property of their respective holders.

July 01, 2009

www.BackupReview.info releases ranking of the top 75 online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise; based on predefined standardized criteria, to help users select the appropriate online backup company.

Vancouver, BC, Canada - July 1, 2009 - BackupReview.info publishes the July 2009 list of top ranking online backup companies, categorized into three sectors: Consumer, SMB and Enterprise. The list comprises of 25 companies under each category, for a total of 75 online backup solutions, based on standardized criteria defined on its site. This standardization of selection criteria goes a long way towards enabling users select the right online backup service for their specific needs.

Ezra Brook, editor at BackupReveiw.info says, “With hundreds of companies offering seemingly the same service, choosing the best online backup provider could be challenging. Users need a standard set of criteria on which to evaluate the different services and understand which one would suit them the best. What most users, therefore, look for are reviews that cover all these selection criteria”. Mr. Brook further points out, “factors that generally play a role in selecting online backup service include service requirements such as: cost per GB, cost per PC or per account, security, speed, reliability, uptime, quality, customer service, accessibility and financial standing of the company.”

Since it started ranking the top 25 online backup companies in January 2005, BackupReview.info has been choosing its top picks from all three sectors in one basket. Based on the feedback from the industry players and its readers, the site has further categorized the top ranking online backup companies by sector. Under each category identified — Consumer, SMB and Enterprise - the top 25 companies are presented in order of their rankings. Where available, links to elaborate reviews of the individual companies are provided.

The top 5 online backup companies, from each sector include:

• Consumer: Carbonite, MemoPal, IDrive, Mozy and Keepit
• SMB: DataDepositBox, IBackup, NovaStor, Remote-Backup, and Vembu
• Enterprise: Intronis, CoreVault, AmeriVault, DataBarracks and StorageGuardian

The complete list of the top 75 online backup companies for July 2009 is found here.

Mr. Brook further comments, “Our reviews, daily up to date news, articles and monthly rankings of the top online backup services, are supplemented with the voices from online backup and data storage companies. The CEO Interview spotlight section features interviews with CEOs/VPs and other senior executives of online backup and data storage companies. The ranking of the top 75 online backup companies is the endpoint of dedicated research and hours of hard work on the part of our research team. Interviews with key personnel in the online backup and data storage industry, reviews, articles on backup basics and links to third party websites on the site, bring a 360 degree view of the online backup and data storage industry”.

About the company:
BackupReview.info has been running since 2004 and is dedicated to serving the online backup and data storage industry. By providing all relevant information, BackupReview helps potential users make the right choice for online backup solution.

The site’s daily posts are published in a number of sites, including Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Faves, BlogMarks, Tumbr, its complimentary blog and many other sites.

Feature highlights of the site include: Daily up to date online backup and storage news, directory of online backup companies, articles on backup basics, reviews of online backup services by its editors, from other review sites, and aggregated online backup companies’ corporate blogs.

Real time Twitter tweets are also featured in the site for keywords: “Online Backup“, “Online Data Backup“, “Online Backup Review” and “Remote Backups” using Twitter Grid. RSS feeds are also available in the site.

For more information, please visit: http://www.backupreview.info/.

Contact:
Mamush Heayie, Managing Editor
editor@BackupReview.info
http://www.BackupReview.info

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco • Get more from this author

June 08, 2009

Vaserv suspects zero-day virtualization vuln

A large internet service provider said data for as many as 100,000 websites was destroyed by attackers who targeted a zero-day vulnerability in a widely-used virtualization application.

Technicians at UK-based Vaserv.com were still scrambling to recover data on Monday evening UK time, more than 24 hours after unknown hackers were able to gain root access to the company’s system, Rus Foster, the company’s director told The Register. He said the attackers were able to penetrate his servers by exploiting a critical vulnerability in HyperVM, a virtualization application made by a company called LXLabs.

Foster said he’s been unable to reach anyone at LXLabs to discuss the suspected …

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Update Articles:

http://www.theregister.co.uk:
LxLabs boss found hanged after vuln wipes websites

http://www.theregister.co.uk:
Webhost denies poor passwords led to catastrophic hack

http://www.mxlogic.com:
Hack deletes 100,000 websites, software developer kills self

By Chris Winter, TechNewsWorld 
June 09, 2009 

Layoffs and high-turnover periods can be chaotic for IT departments due to their propensity for creating orphaned data. Enterprises can safeguard against lost information by instituting centralized control policies and deploying technologies designed to immediately and easily recover wayward data.

Employees are the lifeblood of any business, and the data they produce is critical to productivity. Unfortunately, during recent uncertain economic times, businesses of all sizes across America have laid off hundreds of thousands of employees. Yet when any employees leave during turnover, important data can be lost or forgotten. Such “orphaned data” can consist of any business information, application or intellectual property that has become unrecoverable because it was left on no-longer-accessible edge devices like laptops that were never backed up, or was simply never transferred to a backup-accessible server.

In times of workforce turnover, organizations need to retain mission-critical data to keep remaining business teams productive. Continued productivity depends on seamlessly retaining every team member’s intellectual property, such as prospect lists, business plans, research or financials, as well as withholding it from unauthorized disclosure. In order to retain this crucial intellectual property, organizations needs to be able to enforce policy to capture and retain any orphaned data.

To safeguard against orphaned data, businesses should take steps to (1) prevent data from being unintentionally orphaned on distributed edge devices; (2) established centralized control over retaining all potentially orphaned data; and (3) deploy technology that is able to reliably, flexibly, and easily recover that data under any circumstances.

Preventing Orphaned Data

The first step in prevention is identifying potential repositories for orphaned data. In order to course-correct business continuity planning and …

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June 12, 2009

By Mark Hatch, VP of Software Development at Intronis

Here at Intronis, we use a framework for our development work that grew from the Agile programming methodology and Object Oriented movement called Scrum. It is also directly related to the principles laid down in the “Toyota Way” and lean manufacturing process. You might ask yourself why and how a manufacturing process could be related to software development, and why a company that specializes in online backup and recovery would embrace it to run the entire company, but we’ll answer that for you!

One of the realities of software development is that requirements change. Sometimes they change faster than the project can be completed, and sometimes they change because what the customers thought they wanted was different from what they actually wanted. How many times have you walked into an ice cream shop thinking “chocolate chocolate chip” and looked at the case and decided on the strawberry cheesecake? How many times have you used a piece of software and said to yourself “wow, this is nice, but wouldn’t it be great if it did this too?” Sometimes what you see just makes what you really want a little clearer.
 
Sometimes the market changes too. Competitors enter all the time and old competitors are constantly changing and upgrading what they offer just as much as you do. Why is it that Toyota gets it so right and upsets the order in the US? How can Toyota be so profitable while a mammoth company like GM is declaring bankruptcy? A company needs to be able to respond quickly and efficiently to changing customer needs and competitive pressure from others in terms of product offerings and cost if they want to survive.  GM failed to do this but here at Intronis, we believe we have found a solution to this problem: Scrum.
 
The whole idea behind Scrum is iteration and small steps that deliver real business value. So instead of focusing on the “Big Picture” while trying to implement the entire project with all items defined beforehand, Scrum starts with the truly American idea of “how can I do the least amount of work and deliver the most value”. Slyly, this doesn’t actually mean working less, it just means working RIGHT. We believe that, while thinking of the “Big Picture” is important, it isn’t as important as developing software that your customers really want and find it ridiculously easy to use. It follows that our customers will know what they want as they see it, and developing software is as much of a partnership with them as it is an engineering feat. We believe that trying to do it all up front in the traditional waterfall method doesn’t work when your partners and customers are the focus, and the market is constantly changing. In order to get it right, you have to be agile in the true sense of the word, and Scrum provides the way to be truly agile.

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Ed. - We sincerely thank Mark for his contribution.

Mark Hatch is a VP of Software Development at Intronis and his profile is found here.

By Ashish Nadkarni

E-Commerce Times 
June 03, 2009 

There’s only one way to keep data storage costs under control, and that’s to get rid of unnecessary data. That may go against the grain of IT managers who rightly consider backup and preservation as critical to an organization’s health, but when it comes to data storage, there are ways to separate what’s useful from what’s disposable.

It should come as no surprise to any IT manager that your organization’s appetite for data keeps growing every minute. No sooner than a new set of storage tools is deployed, it becomes clear there’s a need for more, and you start planning the next wave of hardware purchases. More hardware means more floor space, power and cooling — it’s a vicious circle.

The total amount of disk storage shipped last year grew 40.5 percent from 2007, according to a recent study by IDC. If you imagine that this appetite for consumption is going to be questioned at some point in the interest of trying to curtail the IT carbon footprint, then you are not alone. Of course, there is no smoking gun, but there are choices you can make to get rid of unwanted data and free up space. That precious space can then be utilized for other purposes, thereby limiting the amount of new storage capacity to be purchased.

Before getting into “slice and dice” mode, it’s important to define what, exactly, is the goal? The goal is to ensure that spinning disk, i.e., online disk storage, is used for storing data that is really valuable to the organization. Any data that is not — and it could be in any shape or form — needs to be appropriately disposed of. Disposal could mean simply deleting it, or it could mean archiving it in another medium, either a magnetic medium such as tape, or an optical medium such as DVD or CD ROM.

Low-Hanging Fruit

What kind of data can be disposed of? Most often, the kind of data that is “time classified” or unstructured …

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By Debra Alban, CNN

(CNN) – With Wi-Fi access at airports, hotels, and aboard airplanes, business travelers don’t have to look very hard for a wireless Internet connection.

But with these public wireless hotspots becoming more prevalent, in addition to more travelers using smart phones for Web access, are business travelers putting themselves at a security risk?

The short answer, some technology security experts say, is yes. But they add that the use of Wi-Fi at these spots is no riskier than at a coffee shop.

“It’s a shared medium, and if you can connect to it, someone else can connect to it and monitor your traffic,” said Marty Linder, a senior member of the technical staff at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CERT/Coordination Center. “That has nothing to do with the security of the network. It’s just the nature of the beast.”

For Fran Hanna, the convenience isn’t worth the risk. The sales representative from Chapin, South Carolina, would frequently bring her computer on business trips and access Wi-Fi through her hotels. Hackers tapped into her computer, resulting in inappropriate material being sent through her account.

She had to get her computer restored twice, which cost her $900. And while she still isn’t sure …

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May 20, 2009

Acronis Survey: Home Users Live Dangerously with Computer Backup Practices

87 Percent of Users Back Up Every Two to Three Months, But 80 Percent Report They Have Suffered Data Loss

BURLINGTON, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Home PCs and laptops storing the ever-changing data, photos, video, music and photos of consumers’ digital lives are backed up by most users less than once a month, according to a new survey of the backup habits of home users conducted by Acronis^®, Inc. (http://www.acronis.com), a provider of affordable, scalable storage management and disaster recovery software.

The online survey of 5,964 home users in North America found that 87 percent of users back up their hard drives just every two to three months or less frequently, far less often than any industry organization or publication recommends. This number is in sharp contrast with another survey finding - 80 percent of users have lost information and had to restore it.

“I learned my lesson the hard way: I had no backups,” reported Ryan McIntosh, a college student in Woodstock, New Brunswick, Canada. “I installed a program improperly and lost every Windows user account and all the data. Eventually, I had to reformat my drive. I lost two weeks worth of irreplaceable data for school.”

With consumers storing increasing amounts of critical data, those computers must be backed up more often to prevent the kind of catastrophic loss caused by hard disk failure, viruses and malware, unstable software downloads, user errors or physical disaster. According to Robert Thaler, Senior Director, Marketing, Acronis, users must evaluate their unique situations and create backup schedules that match the importance of the data. Many users back up their computers every week or two, with more frequent backups necessary if information changes frequently and is irreplaceable.

“Today, we rely on our laptops and desktop computers to store so much information - financial data, family records, irreplaceable photos and videos - that we need to treat backup and restore as seriously as we do virus and malware protection and be certain backups are scheduled and run,” said Thaler.

Restoring OS, Applications Frequent and Time Consuming
The Acronis survey also found that fully 81 percent of users had to reinstall their computer operating system and software applications. According to the survey, that data loss comes with a significant loss of time, with 48 percent reporting that the reinstallation process took more than four hours.

“I was fortunate enough to recover all my data, but I went without a computer for three days, spent two more days rebuilding it, and it will likely be weeks before I have everything organized again,” reported Gary Clement, of Alexandria, Va., after suffering through a serious malware infection.

“Unfortunately, consumer data loss is more a matter of when, not if - it is inevitable,” said Thaler. “Users should be sure they have full protection in place for their PCs, which means more than just copying files. That’s not disaster recovery. Instead users should back up their operating systems, applications, settings and configurations in addition to photos, spreadsheets and the like.”

Acronis True Image Home 2009, the award-winning backup and recovery software, automatically creates an exact copy of the hard disk and allows a user to instantly restore the entire machine. When disaster does strikes, Acronis True Image Home can restore a computer from a major failure in minutes. For more information about Acronis True Image Home 2009 and for the latest special offer, go to http://www.acronis.com/specialoffers/.

About Acronis
Acronis, Inc. is the leading provider of storage management and disaster recovery software. Its patented disk imaging and management technology enables corporations and individuals to move, manage and maintain digital assets in physical and virtual environments. With Acronis’ backup, recovery, server consolidation and virtualization migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime in computing environments. Acronis software is sold in more than 180 countries and available in 13 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com or contact media@acronis.com.

Contacts:
Acronis, Inc.
Marc Mombourquette
media@acronis.com
or
Birnbach Communications Inc.
Steven Webster, 617-512-8635
swebster@birnbachcom.com

By James Anderson

May 17, 2009

Avsim, one of the most popular online flight simulator sites, has been deleted by malicious hackers. During the attack on the site, the intruders apparently destroyed data on both of the two servers that runs Avsim (www.avsim.com). What’s worse - the founder of the site Tom Allensworth, said they had no external backup - so he has called it a complete loss.

According to Allensworth, they backed up their data daily but only between the two servers - they had no external backup means or plan. Make this be a lesson to all of the other site owners out there, backup daily and backup externally - no matter how many servers you have.

“AVSIM is totally offline at this time and …

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Related News:

http://www.thetechherald.com:
IT perspective: Attack on avsim.com results in total loss

May 12, 2009

By Rafe Needleman

One of the greatest stumbling blocks that a start-up Web service company has to get over is customers’ fear that the company will die and take their data with it. Manufacturers of traditional software can go belly-up without it immediately affecting a product’s utility. And if General Motors went out of business tomorrow (I know, shocking), its cars would still be drivable. But Web services are different. When your cloud app goes under for the last time, it sinks customers, too.

In the best of the bad cases, when a Web service goes offline, the company in question is able to shut down in an orderly way and let its users know long before the servers are pulled off the Net. Large multiproduct companies generally do this well. When Yahoo shut down Yahoo Photos in favor of Flickr, it gave users plenty of time to offload their pictures, or move them to another service. When Hewlett-Packard shuttered the cloud backup system Upline, it likewise gave users fair warning.

But smaller companies may not be able to keep their servers up when …

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