Liabilities Of Hosting Client backups 2024

Published 8 months ago5 min readDisregarding Ransomware Insurance Advice...

Liabilities of hosting your clients backups will form today's exciting article. Nothing gets me going as much as thinking about the legal and financial risk we as service providers take when offering solutions such as local backup services to clients, does it make me dull? Probably but there you go…..

I have spoken on this several times in a more narrow focus on particular topics however this is going to approach the liabilities of client backups especially when hosting them yourself. I will look at the risks involved in using your own data storage versus utilizing the storage offered as part of a commercial cloud application offering.

While you are here, take a look at some of our other backup-focused articles below that may interest you:

I am going to weave some technical documentation wisdom into this article for several reasons, it is one of the few areas I am both proficient in and thoroughly enjoy and because it seems appropriate no matter what the topic is. I mention it so that I may get the opportunity to manage and maintain data recovery solutions effectively as it specifically relates to this topic.

The technical publication process is an essential aspect of the IT industry whether it be hosting storage solutions discussed here or the steps involved on how to add a new client into your Backup as a Service solution so that your loyal support desk staff can fault-find in a time effective fashion. It enables IT hardware and support services to manage and maintain the IT infrastructure of their clients effectively.

We have years of experience in working with service providers to document their processes and procedures and there is no area more important to a service provider than how their clients' backup and disaster recovery systems are documented.

Vendor Included Storage Solutions

Using the included storage being offered in a white label vendor backup solution is as attractive to service providers as fried chicken is to fat men (No judgements)

The reason for that is that when a backup application comes wrapped in a bow with everything already connected and working together, well what is not to like?

I am going to attempt to convince you not to go down this route especially when it comes to hosting client backups. If the backup and recovery vendor goes rogue or even worse goes zero dark thirty, the chances are high that it will be across the board.

You will not only lose access to the backup application itself but if you chose their inclusive storage package then I have some bad news for you, that is probably gone too.

Hosting Client Backups Using Your Storage

I am not talking about buying a few performance SSD drives and throwing them into a Synology backup unit, I go into detail in another article about the pitfalls of attempting to backup to your own office.

I am talking about choosing one of the many cloud backup storage options that exist today from Amazon S3 to Azure or even Egnyte so that you can get meaningful separation between the Online backup application and the cloud storage network so that in the event of your cloud backup vendor being naughty and absconding to Belize with their customers cash, you can at least access the raw backed up data.

This is because they have no control over your data stores. It's a bit like a BYO restaurant, sure it may be a hassle bringing your own bottles but you know the quality of their contents and always have complete control.

Separate Data Hosting and Liabilities

While this probably holds true for Virtual machine hosting as much as backup hosting we will concentrate on the hosting of client backups in this article.

There are some horror stories about recently where cloud backup vendors such as StorageCraft, Carbonite and Kaseya have been experiencing corruption of backup data in some way and because they control the storage hosting for your backup, they have complete control and your control is limited.

By keeping your data with a separate cloud data storage vendor, you limit the chance of losing both the cloud backup application functionality as well as the cloud storage functionality.

How Does Liability Come Into Hosting Client Backups

It stands to reason that by lowering your risk by using separate vendors for different tasks you lower your risk of complete backup solution failure however you also double the risk of there being a smaller issue of 50% or less so that does need to be considered.

The actual process of determining fault and allocating blame is far too complex for the average service provider though. I have no clue if it increases your liability or decreases it. Every time I have tried to understand the way the legal system works, I initially walk away thinking I now understand only to find that there has been a recent legal result that is the complete opposite to what I was expecting.

That is the long way of saying that you need to have a cybersecurity insurance broker who actually understands the technicalities and who can advise you when either option goes bad.

What I am saying is you need the best technology insurance cover you can afford so that when you get sued, you can survive the experience and continue afterwards regardless of the outcome.

Conclusion

Liability of an MSP when it comes to hosting clients data and backups makes calculating a complex subnet mask look like child's play. I have learnt that it makes no difference if a specific event was not your fault, sometimes you will still be held responsible.

With the increasing levels of litigation leveled at service providers and the potential for massive levels of damage that can occur if a client backup fails, the only right course of action is to grab that large sweaty wad of cash they are asking for and deliver it to them with a smile.

With that out of the way the next recommendation I have is to ensure that the cloud backups application vendor be kept as separate from the data storage services as church and state are in the constitution.

We have a number of other backup articles specifically related to clients listed below that will provide you with more detailed information on a number of related topics:

https://optimizeddocs.com/blogs/backups/backups-client-index

Our team specializes in strategies for Technology support providers and we assist in improving profit margins through standardization and consistent record keeping strategies, so you can be confident that our content is tailored to your needs.

Please feel free to explore our other articles and click on any that interest you. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about how we can help you with your documentation.