I'm sure this has come up but haven't found anything searching. It occured to me this would be a good idea if my data was adequately encrypted. so, any thoughts?

I know theres lots of utils that i could use to mirror or sync (i use a few on internal network) but I'm wondering what approach more experienced unix admins might take to do this, or if you even would?

My idea is to automate a process where I zip up some important files and encrypt the archive (ive no idea what to use to encrypt) and figure a way to auto update it daily or whatever.

For example I have used sitecopy and that seems like one way, I'd just need to archive/encrypt, then dump my compressed file into a directory sitecopy is handling. The idea being (in this case) the directory on the isp might not be secure, but if some strong encryption is used on the archive would this be deemed safe enough? I realize this is grey area "safe enough". my idea would be to use something a bit more secure than a passworded zip for example, but something I could automate.

looking for some thoughts on what utils might accomplish this and your thoughts on security versus the advantage of an offsite backup for those uof us without an offsite plan?


thanks for your thoughts and opinions!

Well, I don't know if the whole idea is great, but I will venture a guess as to the best way to do this.

1. Tar/zip up the files in question.
2. gpg encrypt the zip/tar file (gpg -e your key ID)
3. Place file to be transferred to ISP.

These steps can actually all be performed in one. Add -z to the tar options for compression with gzip, or -j for bzip2. Add your directories/files in place of DIRLIST, and your keyid in place of KEYID.

excellent thanks! started reading up up gpg.