Where to store backups and how to protect them

The three-copy rule

Keep three copies of your data, your site and two backups, on two different media, one of them away from your site's server. If one disappears, the other two remain.

Three places, three uses

On the site's server. Handy for going back quickly, after an update that breaks things. Useless if the server itself goes down.
On your computer. Away from the server, provided you remember to do it, and keep the file somewhere safe: it contains your whole site.
In a storage space of your own, an SFTP server or an S3-compatible space, as offered by many storage services. Away from the server, and without having to remember, if the backup goes there on its own.

Locked away

A backup contains everything: accounts, orders, your customers' messages. Forgotten in a public folder, it can be downloaded by anyone. A backup must therefore be encrypted, and its key stored somewhere other than the file: otherwise, whoever finds the file also finds the means to open it.

What about GDPR?

If your site keeps data about people (customers, subscribers, orders), your backups keep it too. GDPR expects, in particular:

that you can restore the data and access to it in a timely manner after an incident (Article 32): that's the very job of a backup;
that you protect it, for example by encryption (Article 32);
that you don't keep it longer than necessary (Article 5): choose a retention period, and let the oldest backups delete themselves;
that you know where it is: a storage space outside the European Union means a data transfer, which must be covered by appropriate safeguards (Chapter V). Choose your storage region with that in mind.

Encryption also helps on the day of a breach: when the stolen data is unintelligible to anyone not authorised to access it, GDPR exempts you from informing each of the people concerned (Article 34).

With TOP MIGRATION & BACKUP

With the Free edition, your backups stay on your server, in a folder with a randomly drawn name. The plugin checks that a visitor can't list this folder; if your server allows it, the plugin gives you the line to add.
Each backup there is encrypted with your site's key, file names included.
“Download the backup” puts it on your computer. Once downloaded, it opens with TOP MIGRATION & BACKUP on any site, for whoever holds it, unless you first open “Protect the file with a passphrase”: without the passphrase, the file opens for nobody, not even you.
With the Plus edition, a backup goes out every night to your SFTP server or to your S3-compatible space, whose region you choose. It is encrypted on your server before it leaves: your storage space never reads it in plain text.
These backups are locked with two keys: your recovery key, which nobody but you has, and the key of your REDORZO account. Both are needed to reopen one. Once both your keys are in place, a downloaded backup stays locked by them.
You choose how long to keep them, 1 month, 1 year or 3 years: the oldest ones delete themselves.
REDORZO keeps none of your backups.

Discover TOP MIGRATION & BACKUP

Sources (read on 20/10/2026)

Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), Article 5(1)(e), storage limitation
GDPR, Article 32(1)(a) and (c), security of processing
GDPR, Article 34(3)(a), communication of a personal data breach to the data subject
GDPR, Chapter V, transfers of personal data to third countries