

# Amazon Backup: How it works
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Amazon Backup is a fully managed backup service that makes it easy to centralize and automate the backing up of data across Amazon services. With Amazon Backup, you can create backup policies called *backup plans*. You can use these plans to define your backup requirements, such as how frequently to back up your data and how long to retain those backups. 

Amazon Backup lets you apply backup plans to your Amazon resources by simply tagging them. Amazon Backup then automatically backs up your Amazon resources according to the backup plan that you defined.

The following sections describe how Amazon Backup works, its implementation details, and security considerations.

**Topics**
+ [How Amazon Backup works with supported Amazon services](working-with-supported-services.md)
+ [Metering, costs, and billing for Amazon Backup](metering-and-billing.md)
+ [Amazon Backup blogs, videos, tutorials, and other resources](blogs-videos.md)