As the industry undergoes tremendous digital disruption, data has emerged as one of the most valuable assets for any business. E-commerce, mobile shopping, IoT-enabled stores, video surveillance, point-of-sale transactions and customer analytics are generating massive volumes of valuable information for retailers every single day. At the same time, cyber threats are growing more advanced, and well-funded criminal organizations have targeted the retail sector relentlessly with ransomware attacks and data breaches.

However, one legacy backup solution that is often overlooked remains surprisingly relevant: tape backup. That's because tape continues to offer unique advantages when it comes to addressing the specific data protection challenges retail agencies face, from long-term data retention and offline resilience to regulatory compliance and budget constraints.

Here are 10 reasons why tape backup remains relevant for retail agencies.

1. Extremely Cost-Effective for Long-Term Retention of Large Data Volumes

With the growth of video, images, IoT data and other unstructured content, retailers are grappling with massive amounts of data that need to be stored and protected for extended periods to comply with industry regulations. Tape backup is still the most affordable solution for archiving and retaining petabytes of data for 7–10 years or more. The total cost of ownership for it is a fraction of that of alternative technologies when it comes to storing data for long-term retention periods.

2. Provides Durable Offline Data Protection Against Ransomware

Ransomware and other cyber threats have become a daily reality for retailers. By storing regular tape backups offline in a secure location away from primary systems, retailers gain an extra layer of protection against malware encryption or data deletion. Even if ransomware infects primary storage arrays, air-gapped copies ensure the business can be restored from a "known good" version. Their offline capabilities make it uniquely suited for combatting modern cybersecurity risks.

3. Meets Compliance Requirements for PCI, GDPR And Other Regulations

Various industry regulations, like PCI DSS, GDPR and state data breach laws, require retailers to prove they have a process for regularly backing up cardholder and personal customer data and to retain those backups for extended periods. tape storage provides a simple, proven way for retailers of all sizes to meet these compliance obligations through an offline, immutable storage format.

4. Well-Suited for Backup of Remote and Branch Offices

Many retailers have a distributed footprint, with POS systems, servers and critical applications located across numerous branch locations. tape storage is still the most practical option for reliably backing up data from these remote offices, as they can be physically shipped or couriered to a central location for storage. This approach avoids the bandwidth and infrastructure costs of alternative replication or cloud-based strategies for protecting distributed environments.

5. Supports Air-Gapped Disaster Recovery for Critical Retail Systems

For mission-critical retail applications that run point-of-sale systems, track inventory levels, support merchandising operations and more, an effective disaster recovery strategy is essential. 

These applications process thousands, if not millions, of transactions daily and hold data that is fundamentally important to keeping the business running. Yet they also tend to be high-priority targets during a cyberattack or if primary infrastructure fails.

Tape backup provides retailers with a straightforward way to implement air-gapped disaster recovery for these vital systems. 

Through regular backups stored offsite in a physically separate location, retailers gain the ability to restore critical applications even if their primary data center completely fails or is rendered inaccessible due to a disaster like a fire, flood or widespread power outage.

By following a process of shipping recent backups to an offsite facility every day or week and then regularly testing that restores can be successfully completed from those,  retailers gain strong reassurance that they can recover operations from the ground up without relying on now-compromised primary storage infrastructure. 

This simple yet robust approach removes any single point of failure compared to primary replication or cloud-based DR strategies.

6. Integrates Seamlessly with Retention-Based Data Management Policies

To comply with industry regulations, retailers need flexible, retention-based policies that determine how long different types of data should be stored online, nearline or offline. It complements retention strategies by providing a linear, append-only storage format that makes expired data simple to age off while maintaining access to needed versions based on policy. This ensures compliance without overpaying for primary storage.

7. Retains Flexibility for Long-Term Data Access When Needed

While tape backup may not be the fastest retrieval medium, it still allows retailers to efficiently access older backup versions going back many years if needed for eDiscovery, compliance requests, data recovery or other purposes. It’s libraries make it simple to locate and restore specific backup sets, avoiding vendor lock-in compared to proprietary backup formats or cloud storage tiers with egress fees.

8. Integrates with All Major Backup Software Platforms

Leading backup software from Commvault, Veritas, Veeam and others all support it for long-term data protection. Retailers gain the flexibility to leverage their existing backup investments while tapping it for scalable archiving. Integration with backup software also streamlines management and makes restores easy for IT generalists.

9. Remains the Backup Format of Choice for Regulatory Audits

During compliance audits, regulators still prefer to review air-gapped tape backups stored offsite as evidence of a retailer's protection of sensitive data. It provides an immutable, tamper-proof format accepted as a reliable backup mechanism to pass audits. This is a strong argument for keeping in the mix alongside newer technologies.

10. Supported by All Major Storage and Library Vendors

Leaders like Dell, IBM, Quantum, Overland-Tandberg and others continue to advance drive, media and library technologies to keep pace with escalating data volumes. This ongoing investment and innovation by market leaders ensures the format will remain viable and supported for the long term. Retailers benefit from choice and competition among vendors.

In Summary

While object storage, immutable snapshots and cloud have a role to play in retail backup architectures, tape still offers advantages that make it relevant where long-term data retention, offline protection, compliance and cost-effectiveness matter most. A balanced approach often delivers the best of both worlds for retail agencies seeking to manage data growth while mitigating risk in today's complex threat and regulatory environment. It continues to earn its place in the backup toolbox.