Storing backups in the cloud is an increasingly popular strategy for good reason. A good plan includes storing backups securely off-site, and cloud storage backup solutions offer a convenient way for you to achieve that goal. However, when you store data in the cloud, you may face challenges with managing cloud spend, security, resources, or expertise. In this guide, we explore these cloud storage challenges and how to mitigate them.
Key Challenges of Cloud Storage for Backups
If organizations consider using the cloud as a storage platform for their essential data, they should be aware of several cloud storage challenges.
Security and Ransomware Risks
79% of organizations struggle with securely architecting cloud storage, including logical air-gapping, immutability, and encryption. Coupling this with the fact that 89% of organizations had their backup repositories targeted by threat actors (according to the 2025 Ransomware Trends Report), it is imperative that your cloud storage is resilient.
Security and ransomware risks can come from both internal and external sources. This means access needs to be controlled so that a vulnerability in one place does not extend further. Any data that is accessed by threat actors may be modified, deleted, exfiltrated, and more.
To mitigate these threats for cloud storage, it’s crucial that your storage is immutable, encrypted, and logically air gapped. This ensures that, even in the wake of a cyber incident, your data remains tamper-proof, unreadable, secure, and access-controlled.
Using Veeam’s fully managed secure cloud storage can reduce these associated risks. It’s also essential that you use zero-trust security measures to separate the backup and storage software and have multiple resilience zones.
Cost Management and Hidden Fees
82% of organizations agree that fully understanding and forecasting all associated expenses with cloud storage like transactions, data access, and egress is troublesome and often results in bill shock.
Cloud service providers often use a pay-as-you-use structure with data egress charges, API usage costs, and data retrieval fees. This differs greatly from the fee structures for colocation or dedicated services, which tend to be more predictable.
Following cloud backup best practices, such as being selective about what data you back up, choosing the right backup type (e.g., full, incremental, or differential), and setting a suitable backup schedule can help reduce these fees.
While it may be easy to forecast your storage spend, the pay-as-you-use structure for additional charges can add up very quickly and is often unpredictable. Write and read API calls are priced per 1,000 or 10,000 transactions, and they are impacted by block sizing within backup. Smaller block sizes offer greater compression, but the number of API calls increases significantly. Refreshing immutability also requires an API transaction and data retrieval is charged per GB any time a test or a restore is performed. Plus, egress is charged whenever data leaves the cloud provider’s network to your on-premises or alternate cloud environment.
Management of cloud costs alone may often require skilled personnel, and this too is part of cloud costs that should be considered.
Expertise and Resources
78% of organizations lack the necessary skilling and/or resources required to properly design, implement, manage, and maintain their cloud environment. Cloud storage requires management for optimal performance; otherwise, additional risks will only increase.
One way to solve the need for additional expertise is to employ a fully-managed cloud backup solution. Ideally, this solution is also integrated with your existing backup software, making onboarding and training significantly easier. Your organization can continue to use a familiar UI for all of their needs and resolve support cases with ease.
Data Recovery and Performance Limitations
Depending on your internet connection speed, the location of your offices, and the volume of data you need to work with, you may notice that your cloud backup solutions have performance challenges.
Backup latency and recovery speed issues must be taken seriously. If your disaster recovery (DR) plan depends on restoring data from backups in minutes, waiting for slow downloads isn’t an option.
Backup performance should be efficient enough to avoid disrupting production and complete within the desired window, while restore performance needs to ensure rapid data recovery to minimize downtime. The cloud storage solution must offer the necessary throughput and instant accessibility to meet these time-sensitive requirements.
Compliance and Data Sovereignty Issues
Depending on the jurisdiction in which your company operates and the industries they serve, you may be required to comply with the European GDPR, California’s CCPA, or similar data protection and privacy laws. You might also be bound by HIPAA or other industry regulations.
This means you need to ensure you understand data residency requirements and the policies and procedures your cloud storage providers follow. Failure to comply with these regulations can cost your business a lot of money in fines and damage your reputation.
Major cloud service providers offer secure products that are designed with data security, privacy, and industry regulations in mind. Compliant cloud products and monitoring solutions can give you peace of mind that your business backup procedures are fully compliant.
How to Overcome Cloud Storage Challenges
The golden rule of backups is to have at least three copies of your data on at least two different types of media. At least one of those backups should be off-site, and one should be offline to prevent tampering. Your backups should also be verified to ensure there are zero errors. Your cloud storage helps follow this rule, but there are additional components to ensuring you’re addressing all the other aforementioned factors:
- Make sure your backups are immutable: Ransomware is just one of the security issues to consider, since backups can also be tampered with in other ways. Immutability prevents unauthorized changes, so no matter the source, you can feel confident that the data you restored from a backup is in the exact state it was when the backup was made.
- Encrypt your data: All data sent to the cloud should be encrypted in transit and at rest to provide an additional safeguard against tampering and reduce the risk of data breaches. When you store data on a cloud server, you can’t be 100% sure who can access that server. However, if the stored data is encrypted, it reduces the risk of unauthorized access.
- Follow the zero trust framework: You must verify explicitly, assume breach, and provide least privilege access. Threats can come from both outside and inside the network, and therefore, no entity — whether it be a user, device, or application — should be trusted by default. Your storage needs to be air-gapped so that your data is isolated and inaccessible to untrusted networks.
- Ensure your performance requirements are met: Cloud storage must offer the necessary throughput and instant accessibility to meet time-sensitive requirements. The storage must also be durable to your organization’s standards and protect data against loss or corruption over time.
- Benefit from vast global presence for data residency and data sovereignty: In addition to regional compliance and privacy that global coverage can help you achieve, this practice also helps reduce latency and maximizes performance.
- Understand the TCO of cloud storage: Be prepared for unpredictable costs and ensure that your budget can meet your storage needs.
If the burden of managing a secure cloud storage solution is too significant for your in-house IT team, consider employing a fully managed business backup solution.
Veeam Vault introduces a fully managed, pre-secured cloud storage resource. Architected to strict zero trust principles, Veeam Vault ensures your business’ most asset is always safeguarded from whatever the world throws its way.
Better yet, we’ve eliminated the headache of unpredictable cloud cost models to make budgeting and forecasting a breeze. Just let us know how much you need, and we’ll handle the rest!
Next Steps with Your Cloud Storage
The cloud offers a convenient way to store large volumes of data off-site, but they present several challenges. Security, privacy, and compliance questions need to be addressed when storing data in the cloud, as well as potential challenges with cost management.
Veeam offers tools and solutions to assist businesses with their cloud backup and storage requirements. Contact us today to book a free consultation or download our whitepaper to learn more about how Veeam can help you with your business continuity needs.
Related resources:
- 8 Steps to Derisk Cloud Storage for Data Resilience
- 9 Must-Haves for Offsite Cloud Storage
- Recorded Webinar: Secure Cloud Storage Made Easy and Predictable
- Recorded Demo: Secure Offsite Backup in Seconds
- Offsite Storage Assessment Tool
- Contact us
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