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HIPAA requires the ability to establish and maintain reasonable and appropriate administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to ensure integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the information. Every day, thousands of users lose critical data to malware, computer mishaps, and disaster situations. From our earliest experiences with computers, we have been told to make back up copies of our work somewhere off the computer.

Organizations often do not store a copy of their backup media off-site which could compromise their data if the office is affected by fire, flood, or other disaster. Some of the more traditional methods, such as tape and disk, can be a bit cumbersome. They also require investment in hardware and software, such as tape drives or optical drives, and the backup media to go in them. Any backup solution requires the proper training for staff to know how to use the media as well as proper protocol for their use. Online backup services can be used as an alternative or in addition to traditional methods.

Instead of sending backups to a tape drive or other media attached to the computer it is backing up as with conventional backup solutions, online backup software sends the data over the Internet, regular telephone lines, or other network connections to an online backup server safely offsite. In order to keep the system resources your practice uses through the day at a normal level, this service is usually performed at night while computers are not being used. Backups can also be done on-demand, any time.

An advantage of online backups is the freedom from worry about your media degrading, becoming obsolete, or no longer being compatible with your recently upgraded software.Online Backups are done on schedule, reliably where most businesses don’t do this because of various factors. Usually it’s because the person responsible for doing backups, if the office has officially designated one, is too busy doing something else, someone is using the computer when it’s time for a backup, or they simply forget. Since remote backups are done with automated software usually at night, when nobody is using the computer, backups are always done on schedule.

Online backup does have inherent disadvantages and this solution is usually chosen as an additional, redundant manner of backing up your data.

A major disadvantage of online backup is that the speed and amount of data backed up is limited by the speed of your Internet connection. The uploading of files to a remote backup system and accessing uploaded files can be slow.

While most online backup companies claim your data can be backed up over regular internet connections, these backup sessions are handled over multiple days. This means that if something happens before your full backup occurs, a loss of integrity occurs. Additionally, if you’ve made revisions to a file since the last time it was stored and your PC crashes, you’ll only be able to recover outdated versions of your work.

Online backup over a dial-up connection is generally only suitable for small amounts of data -- up to around 500 MB. Over a broadband connection, up to 10 GB of data transfer is feasible, but may still be slow. For larger amounts than this, you're likely to need a leased line or a T1 line that can cost in excess of $800/month.

A DSL internet connection only allows for a 700KB/second download speed and a 150KB/second upload speed for data. So, for the average office having around 30GB of data, they would need to upload 30000000 KB of data for a complete backup. (1GB = 1,000MB = 1,000,000KB). Based on these numbers, to backup 30GB, it would take 200,000 seconds or 3,333.33 minutes or 55.55 hours to perform a complete backup of your 30GBs of data. In other words, it would take more than all day, 24 hours each day, on Saturday and Sunday to perform a full system backup.

No matter how easy it may be to retrieve documents from a remote server, does anyone really have the time to reinstall and reconfigure all those programs and settings on their computers? And more importantly, how can you access a web site to download your data if your PC crashes and the Windows operating system (OS) won’t load? No OS, no web access.

Online backup companies charge ongoing monthly charges, which can be prohibitively expensive if you need to back up large amounts of data. For the average office with 30GB of data, this fee could range from $1,200-$10,000/year depending on the number of versions retained, etc. These same funds could be used toward onsite backup solutions that allow data restores within hours instead of the weeks it would take to download your backup files from online. When you do make use of online backup solutions as your sole backup source, you'll be entrusting all your valuable data to someone else that potentially could go bust or otherwise place your data at risk.

Biz Technology Solutions provides free consultation for the medical industry and offer solutions that lower the cost of business while increasing efficiency and enhancing patient care. Our clients trust us as their total hardware, PMS/EMR software, medical website, medical equipment interfacing, data backup, and disaster recovery requirements solution.