No.
Encryption is an option, i.e. not required. Unfortunately the process of encrypting the disc adds even more time to the initial backup.
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Encrypted and bootable backups with CCC (and SuperDuper?) require a bit of fussing for the initial backup. I don’t bother with making my clone backups bootable anymore but wouldn’t dream of not encrypted any backup. Also, latest (ARM-based) Macs make it very difficult, if not impossible, to create bootable backups, unless things changed over the past couple of months. My understanding is that bootable backups will likely be a thing of the past, which is too bad.
I think that’s no longer the case when you use APFS on your backup drive (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). In times past there was a way around the initial encryption time too, but it wasn’t quite as simple as checking the “Encrypt backup” button in the TimeMachine control panel.
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I’m surprised that nobody has “called you out” on this, but the “cloud” is not a backup. If you accidentally delete or mangle you local copy, the one in the cloud gets deleted or mangled as well. A backup allows you to go back in time and restore your file from before the catastrophe.
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This makes sense. The way I’m approaching it is using hazel to backup my cloud storage in another cloud storage
A case in point:
Second time this week.
Yeah, my experience with TimeMachine is that it’s been very, very reliable when the backup drive is directly attached, and far less so when it’s over a network, especially a wireles network.
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Well, when this Time Capsule (bought the day after Apple announced in 2018 they would stop making them) bites the big one, I’ll have to go “direct-connect,” too.
Time Machine is great when it works, but a real pain when it doesn’t. It’s nice as a built-in that is quick and easy. There was a pretty good website pondini.org but it looks like it’s gone. Somebody saved a copy at Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions 1. How big a drive do I need for Time Machine? This should answer your question about drive size.
Arq backup https://www.arqbackup.com/ - I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned arq yet. It’s a solid alternative to time machine. This is the primary software that I use to backup to local, external hard drives, and cloud destinations. Highly recommended!
Clone/bootable backups - I believe the three most popular are Super Duper, ChronoSync, and Carbon Copy Cloner. I believe in having a bootable backup because if the internal drive on your mac goes bad, then you can immediately use the bootable backup. It doesn’t require any type of restore function.
Can you still boot an M1 Mac if its internal drive is bad? Seems like we’re still sorting this out.
Not according to this.
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Good point. Pre-m1 it made sense to have a bootable backup. Does anybody know if you can create a bootable backup on an external, and then duplicate that to a new internal drive if the old internal drive fails?
I love the idea of having a replacement that gives you minimal downtime.
OS install + Migration Assistant is probably your best bet. If you can make a business case for having to cut your recovery time by 2 hours then you can probably make the business case for having second computer that you can fall back on, on which all your data is available. Not that I’m trying to give you a reason to buy another computer or anything 
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Given that the jury is out whether this is even possible on an M1, this advice may not even matter.
But if you CAN boot an external drive, you really want an SSD. There’s no rule that it has to be, but a 500 GB SSD will probably only set you back $60-$70 (watch for sales).
The reason an SSD is preferable is because someday you’re going to be booting the operating system off this thing, and a spinning disk on the other end of a USB cable is very, very slow.
Worth the little bit of extra outlay for the SSD if you’re going the “bootable backup” route.
Cool, I’ll definitely look into the bootable SSD route.
BTW, does Time Machine also backup my mac preferences and other folders in users and other app preferences
Yup. A Time Machine backup contains everything you need to recover everything, though I’m not sure if it contains the OS itself, but that’s not a big deal regardless.
Cool, so I’ve started the Time Machine backup with an external HD. Feeling kinda good 
. Yay!!
Anyway, I’m also thinking to get Carbon Copy Cloner and putting the clone on a separate HD. Can CCC perform multiple clones on the same HD? Are these clones encrypted?
I think so, with multiple partitions/volumes/containers/whatever-the-kids-are-calling-them-these-days.
That depends. On an Intel Mac, if you want the clone to be bootable, you have to created it unencrypted, boot from the clone, and turn on FileVault. If you don’t want your personal data sitting on an unencrypted drive during the process, you have to exclude it from the first clone. Once the drive is encrypted you can go back to using your internal drive and subsequent cloning to the external drive will work.
If you don’t care about it being bootable, just format the external drive as encrypted and create a data-only clone. That’s what I do.
I’m not sure it’s even possible to create a bootable clone on an ARM (M1) Mac.
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FWIW, I don’t know anything about CCC, but if it’s JUST about having complete copies of your disk, SuperDuper can make sparsebundles / disk images - and with those formats you can store as many as you have space for.
So if you buy a 4TB spinning drive and you have a 256GB Mac with only 128GB used, you could put 4TB / 128G = about 32 complete backups on that 4TB spinning drive.
You can’t boot from those, but that may not be possible with the new architecture anyway.
Don’t know if that helps or not. 
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You get some of that with APFS volumes as well, but the idea of being able to add a DMG to my backup drive (and therefore to my cloud backup) is appealing. Can those disk images be used during OS installation to restore all your apps, data, and settings like a Time Machine backup or clone?
Storing multiple backups on a single drive, whether HDD or SSD, is not really a good idea because if the drive fails you lose not just one backup but several.
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