This is a great example of the difference between "safe" and "secure".

Two locations is intrinsically less secure, not more. You're exposed to exfiltration from either site. It is, however, safer, because you need both sites to fail before you lose data.

But there’s also a difference between “secure” and “confidential”.

Many definitions of security include integrity and availability as a properties to protect - and storing data in multiple locations can definitely help protect both of those.

Yeah, agreed.

If you think of safety as defence against accidents and security as defence against attacks, there's a large natural overlap simply because "deliberately cause an accident" is the most obvious family of strategies for an attacker.

That said, this distinction between safety and security, between accident and attack, often gets lost in this sort of discussion, and for this particular thread, highlighting the difference, and how the two are sometimes at odds with each other, was more important than highlighting the overlap.

I never thought of it that way but it's obvious now that you point it out. Physical access -duh! unless you can control both places (eg an office and a second office), but even then break-ins happen.

At least now I feel better about not having an "off-site backup" (I'm a "prosumer", not actually working in the feild).