The ultimate "Convince my boss" Guide for backups!

You're in charge of defining what backup solution to use, and we'll help you convince whoever signs at the bottom!

Understanding BaaS

Why you need a backup solution?Understand the threats and the risks you're facing Pain points your boss will recognize Common objections you will hear Why you need to backup your data (per data type)How is your data secured, today?Understand what Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) is and why you might need it What are the alternative backup solutions?What are the key features you should be looking for in a BaaS solution?Your obligations when it comes to backup The case for Agencies and Development Shops Data Security, and compliance regulations with Backups

Data Security, Compliance at SimpleBackups

Data Security with SimpleBackups Encryption, transit, stored data Compliance and auditing Questions and concerns

Discover SimpleBackups

SimpleBackups walkthrough Configuring a backup Restoring a backup Backup Recovery Plan and compliance board Real-world use cases SaaS & Digital Product backup Agency project based backups Geeks securing their hobby project

The Elevator Pitch

Select your topic

You're working in a startup, a SaaS maybe, a marketplace, in any case you're dealing with databases, code, and a lot of data.

Well, why would you need a backup solution?
You have configured your AWS daily backups, and even-though it cost you a lot of sweat it's now running so, no need right...?

Well it depends.

Do you know if your backups are really running?
Have you checked if you can restore them?
I guess someone from your team is regularly testing these backups .. right?
Btw, do you know if restoring them means restoring your whole server, must be documented... right?

Also, have you considered what would happen if your AWS account was compromised?
What if your lead dev, leaves the company and you need to restore a backup?
Ever heard about ransomware?

Are you GDPR compliant? What about your backups?
Did Marco tell you that the next ISO certification renewal is in 2 weeks?
Do you have the proper documentation and logs for your security audit?

What if I told you, you could check all of these marks with a single solution?
Well, you may want to consider a Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution.

Run your backups exactly when you want, store them in multiple locations cross-providers.
Get notified on any channels when something goes wrong, and have a clear and documented process.
Have a sharable dashboard with all your backups, and a clear audit trail for you, your team and your customers if needed.
Tell your team you can trigger your backup from a simple trigger URL or even embed it in their CI system and see what a smiling tech team can do!
And most importantly, have a solution that will help you sleep at night, knowing that your data is safe and that you can recover it in a few clicks, without requiring a doctorate in AWS UX.

Ding, 7th floor, have a good day.

Why do you need a backup solution?

Understanding BaaS

Data Loss

Cyber Threat

Service Outage

Understand the threats and the risks you're facing

Human error: Nearly 40% of data loss is caused by human mistakes—accidental deletions, misconfigurations, or overwriting important files. Without backups, these errors can lead to permanent data loss and costly downtime.
Technical issues: Hardware failures and software glitches are responsible for about 45% of unplanned downtime, leading to data corruption or loss. A reliable backup ensures quick recovery and minimizes disruption.
Ransomware: Ransomware attacks surged by 93% in 2023, with businesses facing days or even weeks of downtime. Backups can prevent paying ransom and ensure you recover data without delays.
Cyber Attack: Cyberattacks target vulnerabilities to steal or destroy data. With regular backups, you can restore your systems quickly and avoid major financial or operational damage.
Service Outage: Cloud or SaaS platform outages are unpredictable and can leave you without access to critical data. Local or alternative backups guarantee you stay operational, even during service interruptions.

Pain points your boss will recognize

The strongest argument is rarely "we need backups." It is showing the operational, compliance, and ownership risks that appear when backups are handled manually or left to one provider.

DIY backups fail quietly

Cron jobs, dump scripts, and one-off rsync tasks can stop working without anyone noticing. Your boss needs proof that the last backup ran, completed, and can be restored.

Provider backups are not enough

Native cloud snapshots often stay inside the same provider account as production. If that account is breached, suspended, deleted, or locked during an incident, recovery gets much harder.

Every system has its own script

Databases, servers, buckets, Git repositories, and SaaS apps each end up with separate backup logic. That creates blind spots and makes ownership depend on whoever wrote the script.

Audits need evidence

ISO 27001, GDPR, SOC 2, and HIPAA-adjacent reviews require documented retention, encryption, access control, logs, and recovery procedures. A backup that exists but cannot be proven is still a risk.

Private infrastructure is hard to reach

Databases behind firewalls, NAT, or private networks are painful to back up safely. Opening inbound ports or broad IP allowlists just to run backups creates security review friction.

Restores are the real test

Many teams only discover restore gaps during an outage. If the recovery process is manual, undocumented, or owned by one person, the backup strategy is not business-ready.

Security teams question data access

A third-party backup tool that sees or stores raw backup data can become a non-starter. Buyers need clear answers about encryption, data transit, and who owns the storage.

Teams need shared visibility

Agencies and growing engineering teams need role-based access, project-level views, and a single dashboard so backup status is visible beyond one developer's laptop.

Common objections you will hear

If you are bringing this to a founder, CTO, agency owner, or security reviewer, these are the objections that tend to come up first.

Our cloud provider already backs this up

Provider-native backups are convenient, but they usually stay inside the same account, region, or provider as production. That leaves gaps for account compromise, provider outages, portability, and long-term retention.

We can build this ourselves

You can, but the hard part is operating it: monitoring failures, rotating credentials, proving retention, testing restores, documenting the process, and keeping it maintained as your stack changes.

AI can build the backup system

AI can help build the technical pieces faster. Your team still owns the production risk: restore validation, security reviews, dependency patching, incident response, and audit evidence.

Is SimpleBackups secure enough?

The security review should focus on least-privilege access, encryption, data transit, storage ownership, audit logs, and whether backup data passes through the vendor's infrastructure.

Will this help with audits?

A backup tool cannot pass an audit for you, but it should make the evidence easier: schedules, retention, encryption, access controls, logs, reporting, and restore-test reminders.

Why you need to backup your data (per data type)

Select the type of data you're willing to backup, and we'll provide you with a list of reasons why we think you should back them up on top of the general reasons mentioned above.

Why you should backup your "Managed Databases"

Managed databases are, by definition, managed by a third-party provider. This is beneficial because you gain access to services that typically require a DevOps or DBA specialist, such as instance scaling, security patching, and even basic backup procedures.

However, these solutions alone won't fully protect you from human error, accidental deletion, data corruption, ransomware, or other cyberattacks.

✅ Own your backups, store them in a separate location
✅ Run backups when you need
✅ Restore on any provider
✅ Be Data-Security Compliant

Assess how your data is secured, today

While a backup solution, helps you configuring your backups, making sure these backups are reliable, resilient and that you know how to restore them (...), all of this can also be achieved without the help of a solution.
This means that no matter the option you pick, you'll have to make sure you have a proper Disaster Recovery Plan in place.

Backup Strategy:

List all your critical assets
For each, define the frequency these data have to be backed up
Define where these backups have to be stored (Multi-Storage, 3-2-1 strategy ...)
Automated these backups schedules

Backup Reliability:

Can you confirm your backups are well running?
How do you mitigate the risk of backup corruption/anomaly?
Can the backup strategy be easily controller by other people from the team?

Recovery Strategy:

Define your RTO (Recovery Time Objective)
Define the list of who should be able to restore your backups
Document the Backup Recovery process
Test your Backup Recovery frequently

✅ If you can confirm all the above are in place, you're good to go, if not, you may want to consider a solution that will help you with all of this.

Learn more

Backup your production data before it's too late.

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Backup as a Service: How It Works, Benefits, and Challenges

Understand what Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) is and why you might need it?

Understanding BaaS

What are the alternative backup solutions?: There are 3 main alternatives to BaaS solutions:
1. On-premise Solutions
Many backup solutions tailored for MSPs, like Veeam, let you configure backups for most systems. This can work well for MSPs managing infrastructure for many customers with a strong in-house DevOps team that knows these tools.
These solutions usually also support personal computer backups and common company software like Microsoft 365. They are not self-serve, quick to set up, or always transparent in pricing. They usually require a consultant or an in-house DevOps team to maintain them.
⚠️ Complicated setup
⚠️ Requires third-party experts to set up and maintain
2. Custom Solution
While backups may sound easy, there's an iceberg situation here. For some backup types, like a basic MySQL small database it may be easy to set up a shell script and configure a CRON to automate it but it's not something you can rely on in a production environment.

AI tools can make this feel even easier: you can ask for backup scripts, monitoring jobs, restore commands, retention logic, and even a small internal dashboard. But even if AI helps you build the full technical solution, your team still owns the production system afterwards: validating restore paths, responding to failed jobs, maintaining credentials, patching dependencies, and producing the evidence your auditor will ask for.

If you have the resources to build it in-house, you'll still have to tackle topics like:
Storing Backup on external Storages and Multi-cloud resiliency
Backup Rotation Mechanisms
Notifications and reporting in case something goes wrong
Team access
Easy to access reports, for auditing
Encryption, and overall data-security
Version updates and security patches
...
⚠️ Requires maintenance
⚠️ AI can build the technical pieces, but your team still owns operations, security, and incident response
⚠️ SimpleBackups' API and MCP server can give your agents a controlled interface instead of custom scripts
⚠️ Is rarely tested
⚠️ Lacks essential features allowing to trust backups and disaster recovery plan
3. Cloud Provider Built-in Solution
You'll find most cloud providers offering built-in backup solutions for many of their services. Most offer things like automatic daily server snapshots and some offer more advanced service backups, like managed database backups. While this is a convenient solution, it's a red flag for every disaster recovery plan. Here are a few reasons why:
If the infrastructure provider has an outage, so do your backups
If your infrastructure account is compromised, your backups are compromised as well
This is a single point of failure, ideal for ransomware scenarios
Infrastructure providers rarely offer flexible scheduling options
Infrastructure providers do not offer a multi-cloud solution by default
Infrastructure providers do not always offer granular backups. You may need a full system restore for a small data issue
Lack of cost optimization (because backups are bound to the same provider)
...
⚠️ Weak account-level resilience when backups are centralized with production data
⚠️ Lacks granularity when backups need to run at a specific time
⚠️ Backups are not "owned" by you
What are the key features you should be looking for in a BaaS solution?: Multi-Cloud Backups
Serverless Solution
Encryption & Compliance
Alerts & Anomaly Detections
Provider Agnostic Solution
Built-in Backup Restore
Human Support
No code, no maintenance

Learn more

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Backup as a Service: The Ultimate Solution for Data Safety You Need

Your obligations when it comes to backup

Understanding BaaS

In the lens of: The Tech founder

The case for Agencies and Development Shops: As a service agency (digital agency, development studio, etc.), your clients trust you to protect what you've built for them, along with the data generated through these projects.

Whether infrastructure and hosting are part of your offering or not, you need to manage or configure the necessary tools to ensure their data is secure—an industry standard.

By using a Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution, you can configure all your projects' backups from a single interface, granting access to the customers who need it while keeping everything private and secure. You can also provide your customers with access to a simplified "Disaster Recovery and Compliance Dashboard," allowing them to monitor their backup activity and access all required compliance reporting.
The case for SaaS and Tech teams: In the case of SaaS companies, or tech teams dealing with the development of products supporting a business, you probably have some sort of backup mechanism in place.
If you don't, you should, period.

In too many cases, these things are handled by the in-house development team, which knows how to configure and run backups of the system they've built. And that's usually great, until it's really tested.
Your obligation as a tech lead in your company is to guarantee that your systems run smoothly, and that the data generated via your systems is safe and secure.

It's not about having a script, configured to run every night, it's about ensuring that the data is safe, and that your team can recover it.

Practically, it means you have to:
Create backups scripts/routines
Have monitoring systems in place alerting you of any anomalies
Have the system documented, accessible by the entire team
Regular tests
Data Security, and compliance regulations with Backups: A reliable BaaS must ensure all data is secured using end-to-end encryption, ensuring it remains private and tamper-proof throughout the entire backup process.

Additionally, compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR, ISO 27001, HIPAA, SOC 2, and other industry standards may require you to have a disaster recovery plan in place.
SimpleBackups helps support your compliance work by providing secure backups, audit logs, and customizable data retention policies, reducing the work required to document your backup posture.

This means you not only protect your data but also reduce legal and financial risks associated with non-compliance.

Learn more

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Data Security with SimpleBackups

Data Security, Compliance at SimpleBackups

Encryption, in transit, at rest: At SimpleBackups we're focusing on providing the most secure and transparent backup solution, and that's why we've built a "security-first" page that documents every data we deal with and how we deal with it.
Secure Connection Options
Direct Connection
Backups are streamed to your server over SSH, with scripts executed directly on your side. No installation required: just whitelist SimpleBackups' IPs to enable secure access and start protecting your data right away.
Headless Local Agent
Install the Agent once and backups run fully from your server, without SimpleBackups needing access. Works behind firewalls and NAT gateways, with no open ports or IP allowlists required. It is ideal for dev, staging, and production environments.
Your backup configurations
Depending on backup types, SimpleBackups will require you to input different kinds of credentials in order to be able to run your backup.

All of this data is systematically encrypted and securely stored using a rotating key.

On top of that, you don't have to provide root access to SimpleBackups; in fact, we recommend against it. Root access is always something to avoid, and we've built our solution to be able to backup your data without it and by requiring the least possible permissions from you.

ℹ️ Some backup types also allow you to get credentials configured on your end without storing them on SimpleBackups
Backup data access
During the backup process, backup data is not transmitted via SimpleBackups infrastructure. Your data is sent directly to the storage you've configured, without any intermediary.

The only exception to this is when using Serverless, where the backup is streamed from SimpleBackups isolated serverless infrastructure to your storage. Even in that case the data is never stored on our end.
Encryption in transit
We use encryption at rest and in transit for all your backups. This means that you can configure your backups to be encrypted using your own private key but also that all the data transiting between SimpleBackups and your storage is encrypted using AES256.

As mentioned above the data stored on SimpleBackups (configuration...) are encrypted using a rotating key. Adding your own encryption key to backups means that no backups are readable by anyone, including us during transit, since the encrypted output is sent to your storage. The process happens autonomously with real-time logs available for you to check.
Encryption on storage
Your backup can be stored on any connected Storage Provider and you can define an encryption key generated on your end, unique to you, that will be used to encrypt your backup archive before the transit.
This means only you, owner of your private key, can ever decrypt it (as long as you don't lose the key of course).
Additionally, SimpleBackups supports technologies like SSE-C to ensure your data is encrypted on the storage provider side.
Certifications, compliance and auditing: While many self-claim to be ISO 27001 "compliant" fewer are actually "certified".
We, at SimpleBackups, are certified since 2023, and are being audited on a yearly-basis.

Being ISO 27001 certified means we have obligations, when it comes to implementation of strict data security measures and that everything we do is documented and audited.

We're also based in Europe, where data security is known to be heavily scrutinized, and we're GDPR compliant, meaning that we have to follow strict data security regulations and that we have to provide you with all the tools you need to be compliant as well.

*While we’re not yet SOC 2 or HIPAA certified, we are implementing systems and processes that align with their data security requirements. We can also provide reports from our ISO 27001 certification in this regard.
ISO 27001 Requirements
ISO 27001, specifically in Annex A.12.3, outlines requirements for "backup" and disaster recovery in the context of information security. It mandates that organizations implement appropriate backup procedures to protect against data loss, ensuring that information and software essential to business operations are regularly backed up. Backups must be tested periodically to verify their integrity and effectiveness in disaster recovery scenarios. The standard requires that backup copies are stored securely, with defined access controls, and that they are kept separate from the operational environment to prevent data corruption or loss in case of system failure. Additionally, the organization must ensure that backup policies align with business continuity and disaster recovery plans, and that backup procedures comply with legal, regulatory, and contractual obligations.
GDPR Requirements
The GDPR does not explicitly mandate backups, but it requires organizations to implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure the security, availability, and resilience of personal data, as stated in Article 32. While backups are not a direct requirement, they are often necessary to meet these obligations, particularly for ensuring data availability and timely recovery in the event of system failures, breaches, or other disruptions. Consequently, having a robust backup strategy is typically part of demonstrating compliance. Moreover, any backups containing personal data must adhere to GDPR principles, such as data confidentiality and integrity, which means they must be protected with measures like encryption and access controls.
SOC 2 Requirements
In the context of SOC 2, backups are not explicitly required, but they are commonly implemented to meet the Availability and Security principles.
SOC 2 focuses on ensuring that systems are reliable and available as committed, and backups are a typical way to achieve this. While organizations have flexibility in how they meet these criteria, a strong backup and disaster recovery plan helps demonstrate the ability to restore data and maintain operations during disruptions. Backups also need to be secured with proper access controls and encryption to comply with SOC 2's confidentiality and security standards.
HIPAA Requirements
Under HIPAA’s Security Rule, backups are explicitly required to ensure the availability and integrity of Protected Health Information (PHI).
The Contingency Plan standard (45 CFR § 164.308(a)(7)(ii)(A)) mandates that covered entities and business associates implement a data backup plan to create and maintain retrievable copies of electronic PHI. This ensures that critical health data can be restored in case of emergencies or data loss. Backups must also be protected with appropriate security measures, such as encryption and access controls, to meet HIPAA’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability requirements. Regular testing and verification of these backup plans are strongly recommended to ensure effectiveness.
Code of conduct, and security practices: Minimal access to the team
As described in our"security-first" page the data stored on SimpleBackups (configuration...) are encrypted with no one in the team having access to your raw data, at any time.

On top of encryption mechanisms, you're also able to encrypt your backups using your own key, this ensure the data stored on your end is also encrypted.
ISO 27001 documentation trail
We keep track of all that touches security, and log it.
This is a requirement for us to be ISO 27001 certified. We also keep an open "Status Page" that lists any system failure or outage, informing you in real time of what happens but also showing you that we're transparent about our system.
Bug Bounty Programs
While we have strong development practices and automated test systems that ensure everything we do is secure, tested, and reviewed we also leverage the skills of talented security experts that are not part of our team to challenge our system.
Questions and concerns: Choosing the right Backup Solution is a critical decision for your business, and we understand that.
We're here to help you make the right decision, and we're here to answer any questions you may have.

We've bundled below the most common questions users are asking us:
What access does SimpleBackups need?
Short answer - You can provide read only access limited to what needs to be backed up, and we encourage you to use a dedicated user for backups.

Long answer - We're ISO 27001 certified and follow strict security guidelines, we do not store any access config without proper encryption, have encryption with rotating keys, encourage firewall restrictions, ...
With that, we also encourage proper permission management, and giving SimpleBackups the least possible permissions required to complete each backup.

Discover SimpleBackups

SimpleBackups walkthrough

A quick glance at what configuring your backups in SimpleBackups looks like.