The Top 7 Endpoint Backup Solutions
Explore the top endpoint backup solutions to support your organization to recover from data loss or damage.
Written by Mirren McDade
Technical Review by Craig MacAlpine
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Acronis Cyber Protect
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Carbonite Recover
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Commvault Backup And Recovery
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Dell Avamar Data Protection Software
Endpoint devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets are essential tools in today’s modern business world, especially now that remote and hybrid working have become so widely adopted. According to Forbes Advisor, 12.7% of full-time employees are working from home as of 2023, with a further 28.2% using a hybrid work model.
While these devices are essential to keep us connected and facilitate our daily work, they also pose a cybersecurity risk, and open employees up to potential data loss, ransomware attacks, theft, accidental deletion, hardware failure, and corruption through malware attacks. Having an effective backup solution in place means that you have a way of mitigating these threats. If an attack does happen, you are able to restore valuable information, meaning you can resume working productively again. Many compliance and regulatory bodies also expect you to implement data protection and backup due to its effectiveness.
Recovery is just as important as preventing an attack in the first place – you can lose data without being attacked if an insider knowingly or unknowingly deletes data. Your entire business network – including employee devices – store a wealth of valuable and critical information. If lost, this could have a severe negative impact business operations. It makes sense, then, to put recovery solutions in place to help mitigate some of the potential for damage if your endpoints are targeted.
To help you find the right endpoint backup solution that suits your organization’s needs, we have put together a list of the best options to consider. In this article, we’ll introduce each solution and vendor, cover some of the key capabilities, then provide a recommendation for what type of organization we think would benefit most from implementing each one.
Founded in 1989 and acquired by Kaseya in 2018, Unitrends is a backup, business continuity, and disaster recovery provider. Their cloud-based solutions focus on streamlining data protection by automating manual tasks and simplifying management. Unitrends Endpoint Backup provides image-based, direct-to-cloud backup for data on PCs, servers, on-prem, and in cloud VM workloads.
The solution offers a comprehensive feature set, including automated backup schedules, file, folder, and image restoration, bare metal recovery onto original or new hardware, encryption at rest and in transit, and immutable backup storage. The platform also enables users to restore backups that have been accidentally or maliciously deleted.
Unitrends Endpoint Backup is a completely cloud-based solution, making it quick and easy to deploy, without the need for additional infrastructure or hardware. Users can simply install the Unitrends agent and the platform immediately begins backup up their data to the Unitrends Cloud. The platform is very user-friendly; users can monitor their backups and initiate restores with ease via the web-based management portal. Overall, we recommend Unitrends Endpoint Backup as an intuitive, cost-effective backup solution for organizations that don’t require disaster recovery spin-up.
Acronis Cyber Protect
Acronis was founded in 2003 and provides unified data protection and cybersecurity via their award-winning technologies. Acronis Cyber Protect is their cloud backup solution that provides security features such as zero knowledge encryption, anti-ransomware capabilities, and AI based behavioral detection. This solution promises to safeguard data by natively integrating data protection and cybersecurity, effectively streamlining endpoint protection. The solution includes features such as forensic backup, safe recovery, global threat monitoring and alerts, global and local allowlists from backups, continuous data protection, anti-malware and antivirus capabilities, and fail-safe patching.
Acronis Cyber Protect brings together three Acronis products in one convenient bundle, which include backup and recovery, security, and endpoint protection management. This is a feature rich solution with a varied set of capabilities, capabilities that go beyond business-grade backup and cloud storage by including advanced security and device management features that are particularly useful for organizations with remote and hybrid workers to support. We would recommend Acronis Cyber Protect to larger organizations with both the need and the resources to implement such a comprehensive solution to protect their endpoints from threats and data loss.
Acronis Cyber Protect
Carbonite Recover
Carbonite in an American company, founded in 2006, that provides an online backup service designed to simplify the administrative tasks associated with deploying data protection. It aims to offer comprehensive, automatic backup capabilities for all endpoint devices and the data that resides there. This solution provides users with features such as incremental restore, global deduplication, policy-controlled backups, and advanced admin control. Carbonite also promises an easy deployment process and provides secure protection for data with 256-bit AES encryption in motion and at rest. Mitigation features include global location tracking, remote data wipe, and poison pill.
Carbonite Recover is a comprehensive, automatic backup solution for all your endpoints and the valuable data that resides on them. It provides centralized management and control features, deployment is easy, and configuration options are flexible to minimize the impact of backup workloads traveling across the network. This solution provides organizations with scalable, flexible, enterprise-grade endpoint backup for their mobile workforce, as well as the ability to back up and selectively recover Microsoft 356 data. We would recommend Carbonite Recover to anyone looking for comprehensive endpoint backup capabilities and an automated, silent, centralized installation and operation.
Carbonite Recover
Commvault Backup And Recovery
Commvault is an American data protection and data management software company founded in 1996. Their solution, Commvault Backup and Recovery, provides users with enterprise-grade protection and automated backup and recovery for virtual machines, databases, containers, applications, files, and endpoints. This solution comes with an impressive list of capabilities; the backup specific features include customized schedules, deduplicated data, auto discovery, customized retention for recovery and compliance, configurable encryption both at-rest and in-transit, and policy-driven automation, monitoring, and reporting.
Commvault’s technology supports organizations in reducing the burden on database administrators, while streamlining business processes, making them more productive. The platform facilitates business planning to improve business outcomes and offers users increased visibility and role-based access control that helps to enable self-service and restrict unauthorized access while also minimizing data sprawl. We would recommend Commvault backup and recovery to organizations looking for a robust product that is comprehensive and provides visibility with a single dashboard.
Commvault Backup And Recovery
Dell Avamar Data Protection Software
Dell Technologies is a multinational technology company that provides individuals and organizations with computer hardware and software, data storage, and IT services. Dell Avamar Data Protection Software is their data protection solution, designed for physical, virtual, and cloud environments. The platform provides comprehensive backup and recovery across the IT ecosystem and can effectively scale from daily backup protection for endpoints to high-performance protection for large enterprises. It offers flexible storage options and optimization, with cost effective backup to object storage in the cloud.
Dell Avamar Data Protection Software provides quick and efficient backup and recovery via a complete software and hardware solution that is equipped with integrated variable-length deduplication technology and provides users with flexible deployment options for daily backups in a dispersed environment. This, alongside the optimized incremental or daily backups, makes Dell a strong option for small, medium, or enterprise organizations that prioritize scalability and flexibility in their endpoint backup solution.
Dell Avamar Data Protection Software
Druva inSync Enterprise Endpoint Data Backup
Founded in 2008, Druva is a software solutions company that provides SaaS-based data protection and management products. Druva inSync Enterprise Endpoint Data Backup is their solution for simplifying endpoint data protection, ensuring regulatory compliance, and improving data visibility for today’s mobile workforces. The solution provides cloud endpoint backup and recovery, has self-service restore, an incremental forever backup model, and provides global source-side deduplication. It also provides cloud-based centralized management, role-based access control, integrates mass deployment for endpoints, and offers strong security features such as customer-only access to customer data and advanced encryption for data at rest and in transit.
Druva’s endpoint data management capabilities include data loss prevention with remote wipe, ransomware protection and recovery, and quick and simple OS migration. This solution is flexible and capable of adapting to the needs of your organization. It is also simple to use and straightforward to navigate, making it a very user-friendly option that causes minimal disruption to end users. We would recommend Druva inSync Enterprise Endpoint Data Backup to organizations of any size that are interested in utilizing a comprehensive endpoint backup solution to support their security needs, whilst having minimal impact on the productivity of their users.
Druva inSync Enterprise Endpoint Data Backup
Veeam Endpoint Backup
Veeam Software is a backup and data management platform that protects data across all environments, including cloud, virtual, and physical. Veeam Endpoint Backup is a simple, straightforward solution that enables organizations to back up Windows-based desktops and laptops without hassle. This solution provides image-based backups across the entire device, while excluding unnecessary files automatically. It allows you to select individual files and folders to back up, as well as letting you utilize block-level backup for selected drives or volumes on your computer.
Veeam Endpoint Backup is a strong solution for scheduling automatic backups of your entire system, as well as specific volumes or chosen folders. It offers a range of recovery options and includes proprietary diagnostic tools, as well as some useful Microsoft Windows diagnostic tools, to support organization in troubleshooting issues and accomplishing various advanced administrative tasks. This solution is easy to use and is an excellent choice for any organizations that are looking for an endpoint backup solution with effective scheduling. Admins have a good deal of control over configuration and management of the service.
Veeam Endpoint Backup
FAQs
Everything You Need To Know About Endpoint Backup (FAQs)
Security and safety for endpoints is extremely important to businesses due to the number of endpoints within an organization, and the potential severity of a breach. Few organizations could function efficiently – or at all, in many cases – without access to laptops, workstations, tablets, smartphones etc., – each one of these is an endpoint. Endpoint backup saves copies of important data that can be revisited if something happens to the original data. It is a bit like clicking the “undo” button once something has been deleted.
Endpoint backup ensures that all data from the endpoint is accessible in the event of data being lost, stolen, danged, or otherwise unusable. It could be that a hard drive fails, a natural disaster occurs, or there is an accidental deletion. Each of these could result in you losing valuable data and being unable to continue business operations as normal. Not only does an organization have to account for the loss of data, but there will also be an impact on productivity, and extra resources will be needed to get things back on track. They may need to repeat workloads and contact customers before they can continue. With backup solutions, the impact of a data loss is mitigated.
Backup solutions begin by scanning your environment and recording the information. This data is then transferred to a secondary storage location, as you see fit. It could be that this is a cloud storage area, or a physical storage center. There are benefits to both storage areas – it is worth checking with compliance bodies if they have any expectations for your environment.
Once the data has been saved, you can forget about it. That is, until you need it. If a cyber event does occur, you can access the information you have saved, and reinstate it. Most backup solutions give you the ability to restore single files, groups of documents, or entire systems. These can be uploaded to the original area, or a new one.
Historically, endpoint protection meant utilizing signature-based antivirus at each endpoint, but today’s more sophisticated malware has surpassed this level of and is capable of bypassing traditional AV solution.
Today a multifaceted approach is highly recommended, which should include things like MFA, network access control, and advanced anti-malware software. But even with all these solutions in place an endpoint backup solution is needed to fully round out endpoint security.
Time to recover is a key metric in any endpoint security plan, and an effective endpoint backup solution can help to ensure organizations have that necessary recovery time and can carry on with operation with as little disruption as possible.
Endpoint backups solutions may vary in terms of functionality, with each solution having their own features regarding automation, validation, security, and recovery process. But generally, any endpoint backup solution you employ should provide comprehensive file protection for every device, typically with a centrally managed portal for configuration and an easy, straightforward way to restore backups quickly.
Some key features to look out for in an endpoint backup solution include:
- Self-service. With modern workforces often operating from various locations, across multiple time zones and using various devices, self-services control and management is a useful feature. If end users can independently search files, restore backups, and carry on their work without needing to consult with IT teams everyone’s job is made easier and there is less overall disruption to productivity.
- Automation. Process automation is a key feature that ensures productivity can remain consistent. IT environments can benefit from automation as it eliminates multiple time-consuming tasks for users and IT teams. This allows security teams to do their job effectively with minimal disruptions.
- Resource optimization. Backups require storage space and bandwidth, no matter what tools you choose to use. It is a good idea to look for an endpoint backup solution that offers deduplication, bandwidth throttling, compression, network acceleration, and other methods of optimizing bandwidth usage and storage. This will result in you using up less valuable storage space.
Full Backups: This is the most basic and complete form of backup is, as the name suggests, where complete copies are made of all data. The entirety of the data on your system is stored security, with the primary advantage of ensuring that a complete copy of all data is readily available. This is the most time and storage intensive form of data backup, but also the most comprehensive. When you need to recover data, you can restore an entire system from a single backup.
Incremental Backups: An incremental backup means copying only the data that has been altered since the last full backup. This means that is will only be a partial backup. When used in conjunction with a full backup, or multiple previous incremental backups, organizations will have a comprehensive record of their data. Since this is only a partial backup it is a less time consuming process so organizations can run this type of backup more often. Organizations might end up having to restore from multiple different backups to gain a complete picture.
Differential Backups: These ae very similar to incremental backups, except they will record all alternations made to data since the original full backup. Differential backups require more space and time to complete than incremental backups, although less than full backups, but means you will only have to deal with two backup copies which is a lot easier to manage, while still providing a comprehensive copy off the data. As you are restoring from two records, this type of backup is less storage intensive and faster than incremental backups.
Written By
Mirren McDade is a senior writer and journalist at Expert Insights, spending each day researching, writing, editing and publishing content, covering a variety of topics and solutions, and interviewing industry experts. She is an experienced copywriter with a background in a range of industries, including cloud business technologies, cloud security, information security and cyber security, and has conducted interviews with several industry experts. Mirren holds a First Class Honors degree in English from Edinburgh Napier University.
Technical Review
Craig MacAlpine is CEO and founder of Expert Insights. Before founding Expert Insights in August 2018, Craig spent 10 years as CEO of EPA cloud, an email security provider acquired by Ziff Davies, formerly J2Global (NASQAQ: ZD) in 2013, which has now been rebranded as VIPRE Email Security. Craig has extensive experience in the email security industry, with 20+ years of experience helping organizations to stay secure with innovative information security and cyber security solutions.