Redefine Data Protection Against Modern Threats

Traditional backup solutions are no longer sufficient. Cybercriminals now target backup data in 96% of ransomware attacks, knowing that compromising recovery capabilities forces a payout. This tactic renders many disaster recovery plans useless, with 43% of companies recovering less than three-quarters of their data after an incident. Simultaneously, unpredictable cloud costs have become the number one pain point for enterprises, with egress fees and API charges often exceeding storage costs by 3-5x. An effective data strategy must address both security and economic resilience. This requires a shift toward solutions that offer an immutable backup, creating a secure, unchangeable data copy.

An immutable backup ensures data integrity by storing it in a write-once-read-many (WORM) state. Once written, the data cannot be altered or deleted for a predefined retention period, not even by administrators with the highest privileges. This provides a guaranteed clean recovery point, neutralizing threats from ransomware and malicious insiders. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) specifically recommends using immutable backups to mitigate ransomware effectively. This modern approach transforms data protection from a reactive measure into a proactive defense, securing business continuity.

Achieve Financial Control with Predictable Cloud Storage

Vendor lock-in and opaque pricing models create significant financial risk. Organizations report saving 60-80% on cloud storage costs by eliminating egress and API fees from their workflows. An S3-compatible alternative with a transparent pricing model provides a built-in exit strategy and makes budget planning possible. This approach eliminates the surprise bills that erode MSP margins and enterprise IT budgets. Predictable pricing is a key driver for organizations seeking alternatives to hyperscaler lock-in.

A cost-efficient design should include these key economic advantages:

• Zero Egress Fees: Retrieve your data without penalty, ensuring data portability and eliminating a major hidden cost.
• No API Call Costs: Run data-intensive applications and backup jobs without worrying about per-request charges, which often exceed storage costs.
• No Minimum Storage Duration: Pay only for what you use, providing the flexibility needed for dynamic workloads and short-term projects.
• Transparent Pricing: Simplify budget forecasting with a clear model that removes the complexity of tiered storage and hidden charges.

This predictable economic model allows Managed Service Providers to offer competitive Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solutions with stable, defensible margins. By removing variable costs, you can quote with confidence and build a more profitable service offering.

Leverage S3 Compatibility for Seamless Integration

S3 compatibility is the industry standard for object storage, but not all implementations are equal. True compatibility means your existing applications, scripts, and backup tools continue to work without code rewrites. An enterprise-ready S3 API supports advanced capabilities like versioning, lifecycle management, and Object Lock, ensuring a seamless migration. This drop-in replacement capability protects your past investments and reduces migration risk to nearly zero. You only need to change the endpoint to start realizing cost and performance benefits.

Impossible Cloud offers full S3-API compatibility, enabling out-of-the-box integrations with leading backup tools like NovaBackup. This ensures that your entire data protection ecosystem functions as expected from day one. The ability to migrate without application rewrites accelerates time-to-value by over 50%. This seamless integration is critical for maintaining business continuity during the transition to a more cost-effective and secure storage solution.

Implement an Always-Hot Architecture for Superior Performance

Complex storage tiering introduces operational fragility and hidden costs. An "Always-Hot" object storage model ensures all data is immediately accessible without restore delays or retrieval fees. This architecture simplifies operations and delivers up to 20% faster backup performance compared to traditional cloud storage. Strong read/write consistency and predictable low latencies are crucial for mixed workloads, from millions of small files to large-scale archives. This model eliminates the risk of API timeouts and lifecycle policy drift associated with tiered systems.

An Always-Hot architecture provides several distinct advantages for your backup strategy:

1. Instant Data Access: All objects are treated as tier-one data, eliminating the need for complex restore procedures from cold storage.
2. Consistent Performance: Predictable low latency ensures that backup and recovery operations meet their required time objectives (RTOs).
3. Simplified Management: A single storage tier removes the operational overhead of managing data lifecycle policies between hot and cold storage.
4. No Restore Surprises: Avoid unexpected fees and delays when you need to access your data urgently, strengthening auditability and recovery readiness.

This approach ensures your backup infrastructure is resilient, performant, and operationally efficient, providing a reliable foundation for business continuity.

Secure Regulated Workloads with Enterprise-Grade Compliance

For organizations in regulated industries like finance and healthcare, robust security and compliance are non-negotiable. An immutable backup is a core component of a modern compliance framework. Enterprise-grade certifications such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001 provide independent verification that a service provider meets stringent international standards for managing and securing customer data. These certifications are essential for regulated workloads, demonstrating a commitment to data protection without vendor lock-in.

A comprehensive security posture includes multi-layer encryption for data in transit and at rest, as well as robust identity and access management (IAM). Granular, role-driven policies with MFA and support for external identity providers via SAML/OIDC are critical for mapping security to real-world organizational structures. With country-level geofencing, you retain full data control, ensuring data remains in predefined regions to meet compliance requirements. This combination of features provides the most secure cloud storage for your critical data.

Follow the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule for a Resilient Backup Strategy

The traditional 3-2-1 rule has evolved to address modern cyber threats. The updated 3-2-1-1-0 backup rule provides a comprehensive framework for data resilience. It ensures that even if production systems and primary backups are compromised, a secure and verified copy of your data is always available for recovery. This strategy is the gold standard for protecting against ransomware and ensuring business continuity.

Here is a breakdown of the 3-2-1-1-0 rule:

• 3 Copies of Your Data: Maintain your primary data and at least two backups.
• 2 Different Media Types: Store your backups on at least two separate storage types, such as disk and cloud object storage.
• 1 Offsite Copy: Keep at least one backup copy in a separate physical location to protect against local disasters.
• 1 Immutable or Offline Copy: Ensure one of the backup copies is unchangeable, using technologies like S3 Object Lock.
• 0 Errors: Regularly test your backups to verify their integrity and ensure a successful recovery is possible.

By implementing an immutable backup as part of this strategy, you create a final, unbreakable line of defense. Talk to an expert to see how Impossible Cloud can help you implement this framework with a cost-effective, S3-compatible solution.