offsite backup/encryption

Hello,

I'm considering to save my backups offsite. I have plenty of place on my website to store those backups.
I do have a few questions concerning safetey though.

1. Is true image 10 able to encrypt the backup data before ftp-ing it to the web?

2. If so, how should I do that?

3. Is the encryption save enough to upload my backupdata to the web? What are the risks of doing this?

4. Are there other safety issues I should keep in mind when backupping offsite? (I was thinking myself to put the backup in a password protected directory on my webspace...but maybe there are better methods?

Thanks for any advice

 

I think TI only has a password protect feature and the whole archive is not encrypted. See this thread:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=188757

I don't know how strong the security provided by the TI password is.

If you only have a small number of truly sensitive files you could use a separate encryption program to encrypt them. You have to be careful not to accidently make a backup if you have any plain-text decrypted files on disk. I use PGP which decrypts my sensitive stuff to .txt files. A TI "pre" command is a batch file that deletes all .txt files in the appropriate folders.

You should check the transfer rate of you connection to your website. Upload speeds can be much slower than download speeds.

A password protected area would provide good security especially if it is a hidden folder. Change the backup extensions from .tib to .gho or mpg so the hacker will try to open them with Ghost or a video program

 

Hello seekforever and gagaman,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup software

Acronis True Image 10.0 Home does not providing archive encryption feature. Archives can be protected with a password.

Please note that seekforever is right and you can encrypt small portions of your data before archive creation. The idea to test the upload speed is very good too because you would need to upload large amount of data if you're going store full backups of your hard drive on your website.

Thank you.

--
Michael Levchenko

 

Thanks for the explanation... Think I will backup to an external HD. Less hassle involved

 

But it's still a good idea to keep at least one reasonably current backup off site, even it it's just storing a harddrive at work or at someone else's house. It depends on how valuable your data is, of course.

 

Yes indeed. This is where I use DVDs - keep a set at a friend's house.
I have a spreadsheet that is very important to me so I keep and encrypted copy on my site.