Delivering Geo-Redundancy for Cyber Insurance with Geo+
Cyber threats loom larger than ever, with bad actors continually developing new and innovative ways to attack business data. To ensure client security and the protection of your MSP, you must prioritize business resilience against catastrophic cyber events. Cyber liability insurance has become necessary for MSPs to mitigate financial risks associated with breaches, data loss, and downtime. However, obtaining and maintaining cyber insurance – and successfully making claims – requires adherence to strict cybersecurity measures. One such critical measure is geo-redundancy, and that’s where x360Recover Geo+ comes into play.
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Defining Geo-Redundancy and Its Challenges
Geo-redundancy involves distributing IT infrastructure, such as servers, storage, and network resources, across multiple geographically distinct locations. This strategy lets MSPs maintain business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) by replicating and synchronizing critical data and services across various data centers. By adopting a geo-redundant model, MSPs reduce the risks associated with localized disruptions, such as natural disasters, power failures, and cyber incidents. If one data center experiences an outage, another location can immediately take over, delivering uninterrupted access to applications and data.
Ensuring secure client data replication without a secondary site can be challenging, as it often requires additional resources and ongoing management. While best practices, including the 3-2-1 backup rule, recommend storing backups in multiple locations, many SMBs struggle with the costs and bandwidth demands of effectively maintaining a geo-redundant infrastructure. To address this challenge, MSPs need a solution that delivers robust redundancy without excessive complexity or expense.
The Risks of Forgoing Geo-Redundancy
Cyberattacks, natural disasters, and unexpected system failures can cripple businesses if data is not adequately protected and ready for rapid restoration. MSPs and their clients face serious risks threatening business continuity and regulatory compliance without geo-redundancy.
Heightened risk of data loss
If a primary backup location is compromised, data may be permanently lost, and critical business functions cannot be restored. A ransomware attack, a fire, or a hardware failure at a single-location data center could also result in irretrievable data loss, jeopardizing business operations for both your MSP and your clients.
Longer downtime with more business disruptions
Recovery from a local-only backup can be slow and unreliable, negatively impacting business continuity. The longer a business remains down, the greater the financial repercussions and damage to customer trust. Clients may struggle to resume normal operations without geo-redundancy, facing significant productivity and revenue losses.
Failed compliance and legal consequences
Regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA, GDPR, and the Center for Internet Security (CIS) require organizations to maintain robust backup and disaster recovery strategies, including geographically separated data centers. Failure to comply with these requirements can lead to hefty fines, reputational damage, and legal challenges that could put an MSP out of business.
Denial of insurance claims
Cyber liability insurance providers expect MSPs to follow best practices for data protection. If an MSP lacks geo-redundancy, it could face denied claims after a cyber incident. Insurers often require proof of secure, redundant backups as a prerequisite for policy approval and claim reimbursement. MSPs may be financially liable for breaches, data losses, and extended downtimes without geo-redundancy.
The Solution: x360Recover Geo+
x360Recover Geo+ strengthens already established data protection strategies by introducing geo-redundancy for backup data. x360Recover, Axcient’s comprehensive BCDR solution for MSPs, already stores data redundantly within a data center – but Geo+ offers the added security of redundancy in a second region. Regardless of how data is lost in one region – be it a fire, storm, flood, power outage, or other natural disaster or a cybersecurity incident, Geo+ can provide the ultimate data protection, storing client data securely and accessibly in a secondary site.
It can be difficult to securely supply client data copies without replicating to a secondary site, which requires additional costs and management. For use cases with stringent data security requirements, MSPs need geographic redundancy to protect all critical systems from interruptions that could drive client downtime and data loss in the event of unexpected hardware failovers or localized disasters.
This x360Recover Geo+ optional feature replicates backup data within the Axcient Cloud to a second geographically separate location, which is engineered to provide at least 10 to 11 “nines” – 99.9999999999% – of durability in all use cases. Sure, that translates to less than five minutes of downtime per year, and there is a one in 10 billion chance that a data loss event could occur in the Axcient cloud – but insurers want to see geo-redundancy. Plus, there are additional benefits to turning on Geo+:
- Accelerate reliable recovery: Enable immediate access to backups across different sites to reduce client downtime and associated recovery costs significantly.
- Enhance cyber-insurability: Secure cyber insurance policies with better terms, lower premiums, and a higher likelihood of claims approval by demonstrating geo-redundancy on your BCDR solution.
- Support compliance and regulatory requirements: Align with major compliance standards in healthcare, finance, government, and other optimal target verticals for MSPs, where geo-redundancy is required to meet obligations, expand niche services, and avoid legal or financial penalties.
- Optimize efficient data transfer: Eliminate the need to create multiple backups directly from the protected system to reduce network strain, preserve client bandwidth, and lower labor and resource costs.
- Integrate with flexibility: Compatible with both x360Recover deployment options – Direct-to-Cloud (D2C) hardware-free and appliance-based backups – MSPs can implement geo-redundancy regardless of existing infrastructures.
- Leverage a familiar interface: Axcient and ConnectWise partners can easily activate and manage Geo+ within the x360Recover Manager at the client or device details level. Seamlessly integrate geo-redundancy into existing workflows, reducing operational costs and improving recovery speed without disrupting daily operations.
>> Get the x360Recover Geo+ User Guide
Why MSPs Need Geo+ for Cyber-Insurability
MSPs operate in a high-risk environment, particularly those serving clients in highly regulated industries. Insurers see the costs of rising ransomware attacks and frequent data breaches, forcing them to require demonstratable proof of proactive data protection strategies in exchange for coverage and claim payouts. Geo+ meets the qualification for geo-redundancy, opening the door for the comprehensive cyber insurance you need.
>> Download How to Get Cybersecurity Insurance: Using Automation for Cyber-Insurability
Proof of resiliency for insurance carriers
Showcasing your commitment to business continuity best practices with Geo+ is a big green flag for cyber liability providers. x360Recover Geo+ backups are a strong indicator of cyber resilience, strengthening an MSP’s insurance application and increasing the chances of obtaining favorable policy terms. Because Geo+ protects against a one in 10 billion chance of data loss in the Axcient Cloud, insurance carriers feel confident to take you on as a responsible policyholder.
Compliance alignment for highly regulated clients
Many industries, government entities, and local laws impose strict regulatory demands that require evidence of geographically dispersed backups. Geo+ helps MSPs provide the necessary documentation to meet legal and contractual obligations, ensuring their clients remain compliant and secure from costly penalties. This can also allow MSPs to enter markets that were previously unavailable. Maybe it’s time to expand your services or focus on a targeted sector that demands geo-redundancy – with x360Recover Geo+, now you can.
Business continuity and financial protection
When disaster strikes, MSPs must restore operations rapidly to avoid financial loss, reputational damage, and claims denial. Geo+ is at the core of BCDR, providing peace of mind that critical systems can be recovered no matter what, when, or how they were compromised. Using a security-first approach, MSPs can layer cybersecurity features like Geo+ onto x360Recover to reinforce data protection against changing threats and attack vectors – just what cyber insurance carriers seek.
Turn on Geo+ for Any Deployment Method
Geo+ supports both deployment options in x360Recover: Direct-to-Cloud hardware-free backups and appliance-based backups replicated to Axcient’s Cloud, supporting MSPs with flexibility regardless of deployment infrastructure. Additionally, partners can turn on Geo+ for only those clients and use cases requiring geographic data redundancy and only pay for what they need.
Already a partner? You can turn Geo+ on for select clients who need it in Recover Manager. Refer to the x360Recover Geo+ user guide in the Axcient Knowledgebase
Not yet a partner? Talk to our team to learn more about Geo+
A Cyber Insurance Resource Just for MSPs
Learn more about cyber insurance requirements and the benefits of being cyber insured for MSPs, including what to do to get it, and how built-in automation significantly simplifies the process and helps MSPs get paid out in a disaster – Get the ebook.
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