What does 'backup' refer to in data management?

In data management, 'backup' specifically refers to the process of creating a copy of data to prevent its loss. This practice is essential for protecting valuable information from various risks such as hardware failures, accidental deletions, data corruption, or other unforeseen disasters. By maintaining a backup, organizations and individuals can restore their data to its previous state, ensuring continuity and security. This process typically involves regularly copying files to a separate storage location, which could be on physical media or in a cloud service specifically designed for backups.

The other options relate to different data management practices and do not accurately represent the concept of backup. Encrypting data is focused on securing information from unauthorized access, deleting old files pertains to data management related to storage space optimization, and transferring files to a cloud service may be part of a backup strategy but does not define what a backup is.