The Importance of Backing Up SaaS Data

January 17, 2019

In situations where data is lost due to accidental deletion, user error, data corruption, malicious attack or third party application errors, organizations are left in the wind to fend for their own and recover data they had entrusted to a cloud service provider.

Mobility has become a staple in today’s workplace. However, it presents a flurry of challenges for IT. Spreading data across cloud services, devices and varied network connections significantly complicate efforts to govern and protect enterprise data. Organizations have to protect any data stored on mobile devices or in the cloud while also addressing mounting legal and compliance requirements. Data backup is one of the foremost services offered by cloud vendors, and it remains the most prolific way to utilize cloud storage. The purpose of online backup is simple and direct: to safeguard information – whether personal or business – from the looming risk of loss associated with hacking, user error, or any other kind of disaster.

As Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions approach mainstream use, organizations have to pay closer attention to data protection. Data is the lifeblood of the modern enterprise. A whopping 60 percent of organizations that lose critical data completely shut down within six months of the loss. Data loss is typically a major concern for SaaS customers since the backup policies of SaaS vendors can’t guarantee the complete and speedy restoration of lost data. Data can be jeopardized by sync issues, hacking, user error, or malicious insiders. Data loss and the concerns surrounding it can easily be quelled by coupling SaaS applications with a complete backup and recovery solution.

Better Safe Than Sorry

Moving enterprise data and applications to the cloud poses potential risks. It involves handing over control of a large part of an organization’s capabilities to store and protect data to an external entity. While SaaS applications typically have a form of built-in data backup, most organizations don’t realize that some of the disaster recovery and high availability capabilities touted by SaaS vendors potentially fall short in preventing data loss. In fact, SaaS vendors usually state that clients are responsible for protecting their own data in their SLAs. Adopting an additional backup tool offers greater control and flexibility to protect your data against threats such as malicious attacks, data corruption or user errors. For enterprises that rely on the cloud, the question isn’t whether or not cloud services will fail, but how the enterprise will cope in the event it does.

A Highly Scalable Cost Effective Solution

In a small-scale scenario, users can copy files between, for example, G Suite and Office 365 to a local volume, or an external drive. But this process is manual, unreliable and will struggle to scale in the long run. For larger applications and files, this is seldom practical. Cloud solutions are scalable, so backup data sets can grow with ease in the storage. While the initial upfront cost of implementing a cloud to cloud back up solution may be high, its yearly or monthly payment plans may appeal to most smaller operations. Capital expenditures for additional hardware are not needed and once it’s set up, data is automatically saved as it streams in. Eliminating the need to proactively track, label and save information.

Added Layer of Protection Against Ransomware

SaaS applications are not unsusceptible to the threat of ransomware. It is assumed that SaaS vendors have more complex information security systems but ransomware is proving to be a vicious animal.  Most strains of ransomware typically target productivity apps like Excel and Word regardless of where they are hosted, be it in the cloud or locally. Ransomware can easily spread to G suite via the G Drive sync tool or to Office 365 through ActiveSync and OneDrive. Cloud-to-cloud backup offers an indispensable layer of protection. It ensures that you are able to recover data in the event of a ransomware attack, minimizing downtime and business disruption.

Restore your Data with Ease

Most SaaS application providers perform a stellar job of securing your data from contretemps that are within their control, however, if you get hacked or accidentally delete data, their ability to restore your data so you can resume normal business operations is limited. Promptly getting back up and running could make all the difference when data goes missing or something goes wrong for whatever reason. A SaaS backup provides multiple levels of redundancy, ensuring that if data is deleted or lost (typically via deletion or user error), backups are easily located. The more levels of data you have stored the better, since each level guarantees that your data is protected against loss, allowing you to quickly access the backed-up version of your data if it ever gets lost.

Organizations are adopting SaaS applications and cloud-based infrastructure in droves, though few are adequately equipped to secure and restore the data within their SaaS infrastructure. SaaS vendors are usually quick to mention that their data has been safely backed up across several data centers, protecting customer data from the recurrent downtime culprits. But that is where the protection ends. In situations where data is lost due to accidental deletion, user error, data corruption, malicious attack or third party application errors, organizations are left in the wind to fend for their own and recover data they had entrusted to a cloud service provider. These issues can be mitigated by adopting a cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution offered by a third party.

Author : Gabriel Lando

By Team FileCloud