Best Cloud Backup for Compliance and Security: 7 Options Compared (2026)

Reviewed by Jessica Eisenberg · Last reviewed: October 2026

Quick summary

• Your backup architecture can affect the scope of your compliance audits. When a vendor stores your backups, its security controls may require additional assessment. Software running in your own AWS or Azure account lets you retain control of your backup data without introducing another data custodian.
• Major security and compliance frameworks share several priorities: reliable backups, protection against data loss or tampering, tested recovery procedures, and evidence that controls are working. DORA, NIS2, ISO 27001, and NIST CSF 2.0 address these priorities in different ways.
• AWS Backup and Azure Backup are strong inside one cloud. Commvault, Veeam, Rubrik, and Druva reach further, and most of them do it as a managed service.
• N2W runs inside your account across AWS and Azure, never takes custody of your data or keys, and N2W is independently certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022.

Which cloud backup is best for compliance?

The question that separates them is custody: does the backup vendor hold a copy of your data, or do you?

Tool	Delivery model	Who holds the backup copies	Immutability	Audit evidence	Government clouds	Pricing
N2W	Software in your account	You, in your own AWS or Azure account	S3 Object Lock and EBS Snapshot Lock (compliance mode); Azure lease and Delete lock	Reports (including an Audit report), Logs, Alerts; reports can be emailed on a schedule	AWS GovCloud, AWS European Sovereign Cloud, Azure Government (including DoD regions)	Standard plan $249/month for up to 20 instances; other plans quote-based
AWS Backup	Native AWS service	You (standard AWS Backup vaults); AWS (logically air-gapped vaults)	Vault Lock (compliance mode); logically air-gapped vault	AWS Backup Audit Manager frameworks and daily reports	In FedRAMP High scope in GovCloud	Pay per GB-month stored and per GB restored
Azure Backup	Native Azure service	You, through vaults in your Azure subscription; Microsoft operates the underlying storage.	Immutable vault (lockable, irreversible)	Azure Policy, Backup reports	FedRAMP High and DoD IL2-IL6 in Azure Government	Protected-instance fee plus storage
Commvault Cloud	SaaS	Commvault, for Air Gap Protect copies	Air Gap Protect	Platform reporting	Commvault Cloud for Government, FedRAMP High	VM Backup published; most add-ons quote-based
Veeam Backup for AWS / Azure	Software in your account (Veeam Data Cloud is SaaS)	You, in your S3 or Blob storage	S3 Object Lock (compliance mode); Azure immutable blob	Session and job reports	No FedRAMP listing	Free for 10 instances; then per-instance subscription
Rubrik Security Cloud	SaaS control plane	You, or Rubrik if you use Rubrik Cloud Vault	Immutable backups	Reporting plus data security posture management (Rubrik DSPM)	Rubrik Security Cloud-Government, FedRAMP Moderate	Quote-based
Druva	SaaS	You, for AWS snapshots; Druva, for air-gapped copies in Druva Cloud	Immutable backups	Platform reporting	Druva Data Resiliency Cloud, FedRAMP Moderate	Credit-based, quote-based

What compliance frameworks require from your backups

Most frameworks ask for the same evidence: you can take a complete inventory of your resources, the backups of those resources are isolated, you can restore, the copy can’t be quietly deleted, you’ve tested it, and you can prove all five. Here’s where each one says so, and how N2W supports it.

Framework	Mandatory?	Independent assessment?	What it asks of backup and recovery	How N2W supports it
NIST CSF 2.0 (Feb 2024)	Voluntary. A US baseline used worldwide	None. There’s no CSF certification	PR.DS-11: “Backups of data are created, protected, maintained, and tested.” RC.RP: incident recovery plan execution	Identify: the protected and unprotected resources view. Protect: immutable, encrypted backups with strict access control. Detect: Alerts on failed backups. Recover: DR drills and Recovery Scenarios. Govern: scheduled Reports
DORA, Regulation (EU) 2022/2554	Mandatory for EU financial entities since 17 January 2025	No certificate. Supervisors review	Article 12: backup policies, restoration and recovery procedures, periodic testing, and restore systems “physically and logically segregated from the source ICT system”	N2W supports DORA Article 12 through automated backups, recovery testing, and cross-account or cross-cloud recovery options. These capabilities can help organizations implement logically segregated recovery environments, subject to their architecture and compliance requirements.
NIS2, Directive (EU) 2022/2555	Mandatory for essential and important entities; national laws from 18 October 2024	No certificate. National authorities supervise	Article 21(2)(c): “business continuity, such as backup management and disaster recovery, and crisis management.” 21(2)(d): supply chain security	N2W supports NIS2-aligned business continuity and disaster recovery strategies through automated backups, immutable storage options, recovery testing, and monitoring. Organizations can configure these capabilities according to their risk assessments and applicable national requirements.
ISO/IEC 27001:2022	Voluntary, often required by contract	Yes. An accredited certification body certifies your ISMS	Annex A 8.13 “Information backup”; 5.30 “ICT readiness for business continuity”	Supports 8.13 and 5.30 with tested, immutable, encrypted backups, DR and audit Reports. Your organization still implements the full ISMS, and N2W Software holds its own ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification
SOC 2	Voluntary, often required by contract	An attestation report from a CPA firm, not a certification	Trust Services Criteria A1.2 (data backup processes and recovery infrastructure) and A1.3 (testing recovery plan procedures)	Security: encryption, immutability, access controls, and audit logs. Availability: automated backups, recovery scenarios, and DR testing. Confidentiality: customer-controlled backup storage and encryption. These capabilities can support relevant SOC 2 controls, depending on the organization’s system and assessment scope.
PCI DSS v4.0.1	Required by the card brands for anyone handling cardholder data	Large merchants and service providers need a QSA’s Report on Compliance; smaller ones self-assess	Requirement 12.10.1: the incident response plan includes “business recovery and continuity procedures” and “data backup processes.” 12.10.2: test the plan, including those elements, at least once every 12 months	Supports the recovery, continuity and backup processes 12.10.1 asks for: frequent backups, file-level and full-environment restore, DR, immutable and air-gapped copies, flexible retention, monitoring and Reports. DR drills can provide evidence for the recovery-related portions of annual incident response testing.
FedRAMP	Required for cloud services sold to US federal agencies	Yes. A 3PAO assessment, then an authorization	Applies to the cloud service. Agencies apply NIST SP 800-53 contingency controls: CP-9 System Backup, CP-10 System Recovery and Reconstitution, CP-4 Contingency Plan Testing	N2W runs within supported AWS GovCloud and Azure Government environments, allowing organizations to retain control of their backup infrastructure and data. Its backup, recovery, reporting, and encryption capabilities can support NIST SP 800-53 contingency controls.
cATO	Depends on the agency	Ongoing monitoring under the agency’s authorization	Continuous evidence that contingency plans are current and tested	Keeps the contingency plan current and tested: scheduled backups, copies at an alternate location, recovery drills, and Reports as continuous evidence
HIPAA	Mandatory for covered entities and business associates	No government certification	45 CFR 164.308(a)(7): data backup plan, disaster recovery plan, emergency mode operation plan	Encryption, access controls, drills, immutability, retention, audit trails and tagging. Full detail in our HIPAA compliant cloud backup guide

How we evaluated these tools

We scored each tool on the four things the frameworks most ask for (restorable copies, protection from deletion, tested recovery and audit evidence) plus custody: who holds the copies, and whether that adds a vendor to your audit. The list covers AWS and Azure workloads. If most of your estate is on-premises VMware, Veeam, Rubrik and Commvault fit better than N2W.

The 7 best cloud backup tools for compliance and security

1. N2W

What it does: Backup and disaster recovery software that runs as an instance inside your own AWS or Azure account. N2W never holds or accesses your data, and it never takes custody of your data or your keys. 

Best for: AWS and Azure teams that need cross-account, cross-region or cross-cloud recovery, and want the backup layer inside the same boundary as production.

Compliance and security features:

• Immutability through each cloud’s native lock. On AWS, S3 Object Lock and EBS Snapshot Lock in compliance mode, where not even the root user can delete a locked backup before its retention ends, subject to AWS’s documented account-closure behavior. On Azure, N2W puts a lease on every object in its storage repository and a Delete lock on VM and disk snapshots, so a copy can’t be deleted or modified until the lease or lock is removed.
• An air gap across regions, accounts and clouds. Archive an immutable copy of your AWS backups to another account, regoin or to Azure Blob or Wasabi. It sits with a different provider, under different credentials and a different control plane. These types of cross-cloud backups can significantly reduce the risk of a single compromised account affecting both production data and recovery copies.
• Recovery you can test. Recovery Scenarios bring back many instances in a set order, app tier after database tier. On AWS, a dry run checks a recovery using read-only APIs, down to IP availability and IAM permissions, and launches nothing.
• Audit evidence. Reports (including an Audit report and per-cloud backup, protected-resource and unprotected-resource reports) run on demand or on a schedule and can be emailed automatically. Logs and Alerts sit alongside them.
• Coverage you can see. A protection dashboard shows protected and unprotected resources across every connected cloud, and since v5.0 you can add up to 200 unprotected resources to a policy in one click. N2W also provides detailed reporting and automatic tagging to assist in complete inventory reviews.
• Government and sovereign clouds. AWS GovCloud, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and Azure Government, including US DoD Central and US DoD East. The FedRAMP and DoD authorizations belong to those clouds. N2W runs inside the boundary and doesn’t move your data out of it.
• Its own credentials. N2W is independently certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and holds the AWS Government Software Competency, plus the AWS Resilience and Storage Competencies.

Pros:

• Adds no third-party custodian to your audit scope. No vendor-hosted service holds your data or credentials, so you have full control by default, and the attack surface is limited to infrastructure you already secure and govern.
• Backups as often as every 60 seconds. 
• N2W supports rapid recovery workflows, with recovery times depending on workload size, architecture, and recovery method. In one customer example, the City of Oakland reported recovering an environment in approximately 30 seconds.
• One console for AWS, Azure and GCP

Cons:

• Google Cloud support covers Compute Engine VMs and persistent disks only
• Agentless for crash-consistent backups only; Windows application-consistent backups use the N2W Thin Backup Agent or AWS SSM
• Cross-cloud bootable restore runs one way, AWS to Azure, for Ubuntu 22 and 24; Windows workloads recover as data disks
• Not built for on-premises VMware

Pricing: The Standard plan is $249/month for up to 20 instances. Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise+ are quote-based. You pay AWS, Azure or GCP directly for the storage your backups use. See N2W pricing.

Bottom line: The pick when you want your backups, keys and recovery environment inside accounts you already govern, with reports you can hand straight to an auditor. A tool like N2W can simplify data custody and third-party risk assessments, although organizations must still evaluate the software vendor under their applicable compliance requirements.

2. AWS Backup

What it does: AWS’s native, policy-based backup service for EC2, EBS, RDS, S3, EFS, DynamoDB and more.

Best for: Teams running entirely in AWS whose retention mandate fits Vault Lock.

Compliance and security features:

• Vault Lock. Compliance mode can’t be changed or deleted by any user or by AWS once its grace period ends, and AWS says it’s been assessed by Cohasset Associates for SEC 17a-4, CFTC and FINRA environments.
• AWS Backup Audit Manager. Build frameworks from control templates (backup frequency, retention, encryption, Vault Lock) and get daily reports in S3.
• Logically air-gapped vault. Locked in compliance mode by default and shareable across accounts for direct restore.
• In FedRAMP Moderate scope in commercial US regions and High in GovCloud.

Pros: Nothing extra to deploy; deep AWS service coverage.

Cons: AWS only. Standard backup vaults remain in your AWS account, while logically air-gapped recovery points are stored in AWS Backup service-owned accounts. Restore testing validates individual recovery points but doesn’t provide native, ordered recovery orchestration for an entire multi-tier environment.

Pricing: Pay per GB-month stored and per GB restored. AWS’s pricing examples use about $0.05 per GB-month for EBS backups in US East. Audit Manager costs $0.00125 per evaluation.

Bottom line: The default for AWS-only shops with a clear retention mandate, and a reasonable starting point for most audits.

3. Azure Backup

What it does: Microsoft’s native backup for Azure VMs, managed disks, SQL in Azure VMs, file shares and more.

Best for: Teams running entirely in Azure.

Compliance and security features:

• Immutable vaults. Enable immutability, then lock it, which is irreversible and adds WORM storage.
• Multi-user authorization with Resource Guard. Critical operations such as disabling soft delete need approval, and Resource Guard can sit in a separate subscription or tenant.
• Azure Policy built-ins that audit or enforce backup on virtual machines.
• FedRAMP High and DoD IL2 through IL6 in Azure Government.

Cons: Azure only. No copy outside Microsoft’s control plane.

Pricing: A monthly fee per protected instance, set by size, plus storage. In East US, an Azure VM of 50 to 500 GB costs $10/month to protect, before storage.

Bottom line: The obvious choice for an Azure-only estate. Add a second tool once you need a copy outside Azure.

4. Commvault Cloud

What it does: Commvault’s SaaS data protection platform, which now includes Clumio for AWS.

Best for: Large enterprises protecting cloud, SaaS and on-premises data from one platform.

Compliance and security features:

• Air Gap Protect keeps isolated, immutable copies in a Commvault tenant.
• Cleanroom Recovery provisions an isolated recovery environment in AWS.
• Commvault Cloud for Government holds a FedRAMP High authorization.
• SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27001 for the SaaS service.

Pros: The broadest workload coverage on this list, and the only High FedRAMP authorization among the SaaS vendors here.

Cons: Air-gapped copies sit in Commvault’s tenant, which puts Commvault in your audit scope. A lot of platform to run if your estate is all AWS and Azure.

Pricing: Pricing may vary by edition, contract, and purchase channel.

Bottom line: Strong for federal buyers that want a SaaS platform with its own authorization.

5. Veeam Backup for AWS and Azure

What it does: Veeam’s cloud-native backup appliances, which run in your cloud and write to your object storage. Veeam Data Cloud is Veeam’s separate SaaS offering.

Best for: Teams already standardized on Veeam on-premises who are extending into AWS and Azure.

Compliance and security features:

• Immutability with S3 Object Lock in compliance mode on AWS and immutable blob storage on Azure.
• Veeam Data Cloud (SaaS) states it meets ISO 27001 and SOC 2.

Pros: Familiar to Veeam shops; free for small estates.

Cons: No FedRAMP listing for any Veeam offering. Separate appliances per cloud.

Pricing: Free for up to 10 instances on standalone appliances. Beyond that it’s a per-instance subscription (Veeam Universal License), quote-based.

Bottom line: A sensible extension of an existing Veeam estate into the cloud.

6. Rubrik Security Cloud

What it does: Rubrik’s SaaS platform for backup, recovery and data security across cloud, SaaS and on-premises.

Best for: Security-led teams that want backup and data security posture management in one platform.

Compliance and security features:

• Rubrik DSPM (formerly Sensitive Data Monitoring) finds and classifies sensitive data, which helps scope GDPR and PCI DSS work.
• Rubrik Security Cloud-Government holds a FedRAMP Moderate authorization.
• Lists SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001.

Cons: A SaaS control plane with privileged access into your environment. FedRAMP Moderate, not High.

Pricing: Quote-based.

Bottom line: A good fit when the security team owns backup and wants data classification alongside it.

7. Druva

What it does: A SaaS data protection platform built on AWS that covers endpoints, SaaS apps and cloud workloads.

Best for: Teams that want no backup infrastructure to manage and also protect Microsoft 365 or endpoints.

Compliance and security features:

• Druva Data Resiliency Cloud holds a FedRAMP Moderate authorization.
• Its trust center lists SOC 2, ISO/IEC 27001 and a HIPAA report.

Cons: AWS snapshots stay in your account, but air-gapped copies, and Microsoft 365 and endpoint backups, live in Druva Cloud, which puts Druva in your audit scope once you use them. FedRAMP Moderate, not High.

Pricing: Credit-based (one credit is 1 TB stored for a month), quote-based.

Bottom line: Convenient if you want backup as a service across many data sources.

Which cloud backup should you choose for compliance?

AWS Backup is the better fit when everything runs in AWS, Vault Lock compliance mode meets your retention mandate, and Audit Manager’s reports satisfy your auditor.

Azure Backup is the better fit when everything runs in Azure and an immutable vault plus Resource Guard covers your deletion risk.

A SaaS platform such as Commvault, Rubrik, or Druva may be a better fit when you need broader workload coverage across cloud, SaaS applications, endpoints, and on-premises infrastructure. However, always evaluate each platform’s data custody model, security controls, and third-party risk implications.

N2W is the better fit when you run AWS and Azure, need cross-account or cross-cloud copies, and want the backup layer inside the boundary you already govern, including GovCloud, Azure Government and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

What this looks like in practice

Aptean, an enterprise software company, has to meet FDA requirements in the US and GDPR-driven retention in Europe. It needed long retention, immutable backups and a way back online if a cloud region went down, and it moved its backup data onto Wasabi so a copy sits outside AWS and Azure. “My North Star has always been security, availability, and cost,” says Ravi Reddy, Sr Director, Cloud Ops + Technology Transformation.

Randstad Spain handles GDPR-regulated candidate data across thousands of EC2 instances. Before N2W, its team said proving retention compliance to auditors “was a time-consuming, manual process of aggregating logs and reports from disparate sources.” Its first full disaster recovery test with N2W, which used to take most of a day and several engineers, finished in under an hour.

DB Systel UK protects more than 1,500 volumes across 700 servers and keeps backup data for more than seven years to meet European compliance rules.

Frequently asked questions

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Sources:

NIST CSF 2.0 · NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 · DORA, Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 · NIS2, Directive (EU) 2022/2555 · 45 CFR 164.308 · PCI Security Standards Council · FedRAMP Marketplace · AWS Backup Vault Lock · Azure Backup immutable vault

Related reading:

• NIS2 vs ISO 27001
• NIST vs NIS2
• Meeting NIST guidelines
• AWS European Sovereign Cloud backup options
• Why SaaS is the new way to compromise
• Air gap backup
• How to know your DR plan works