GDPR and backups: what a small business actually needs to know

Plain-English guidance on backups, data residency and GDPR for UK small businesses — without the consultant price tag.

You don’t need a compliance officer to get the basics right. If you hold customer data, GDPR expects you to keep it secure and available — and backups are part of that.

The bits that matter

• Availability: GDPR expects you to be able to restore access to personal data after an incident. That’s literally a backup.
• Data residency: knowing where your backup is stored matters. UK/EU data regions keep things simple — Acronis and some IDrive/pCloud options offer them.
• Security: encryption in transit and at rest is standard on any reputable service.

The honest takeaway

For most small businesses, a reputable backup with a UK/EU data region and encryption covers the practical GDPR bases for backups. It’s not the scary part of compliance — it’s one of the easy wins. See our small-business picks.