Out-of-provider backup
A copy of the data held with an operator distinct from the primary provider, the only arrangement that survives the loss of the account itself.
A backup kept inside the platform that hosts production protects against hardware failure, accidental deletion of a file and ransomware encryption. It does nothing against events that reach the account itself: administrative deletion, commercial dispute, international sanctions, compromise of administrative credentials. Such events are rare and their severity is total, so they belong to insurance rather than to day-to-day operations. An out-of-provider backup means holding a copy with a distinct operator, under distinct credentials, and testing the restore at regular intervals. A copy that has never been restored is a cost whose protective value nobody knows. Recent cyber wordings make it a condition of cover for data reconstitution, on a par with multi-factor authentication. Proposal forms now distinguish immutability of the copy from mere logical separation. The familiar operations rule of three copies on two media with one off-site keeps its full value, provided off-site is read as off-provider.
In May 2024, the Australian pension fund UniSuper, managing roughly 125 billion Australian dollars, had its hosting environment deleted following a misconfiguration at Google Cloud. Recovery, announced jointly by both companies, was possible only because backups were held with a separate provider.
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