SaaS applications such as Microsoft 365 and Salesforce bring value to organizations of all sizes. Per-user, per-month license fees eliminate the need to make commitments with big, upfront costs. These SaaS applications are enormously popular, as evidenced by Microsoft 365 being used by over a million companies worldwide.
Handing off responsibility for physical data centers and system management to a software or cloud service provider is advantageous. But, be warned; these providers don’t manage it all. In the Shared Responsibility Model (SRM), you are responsible for your data.
As Microsoft clearly states in their services agreement, “All online services suffer occasional disruptions and outages, and Microsoft is not liable for any disruption or loss you may suffer as a result. We recommend that you regularly backup your content and data that you store on the Services or store using Third-Party Apps and Services.”
Likewise, Salesforce announced in July 2020 that they were retiring their Data Recovery Service for backup and recovery. They stated that the service did not, “meet our high standards for customer experience due to the length of time and reliability of the process. This process takes a minimum of 6-8 weeks to complete, and we cannot guarantee 100% data recovery.”
The Need to Back Up SaaS Data
We’re willing to bet that the data in some – probably most – of your SaaS apps can accurately be described as “mission critical.” Things like customer lists and customer correspondence are extremely important to the operations of your business. Their loss would be catastrophic.
Mission-critical. Catastrophic.
These terms sound dramatic, but when it comes to losing lists of current customers and pending deals in your pipeline, they’re definitely accurate. 37% of SMBs have lost customers and 17% have lost revenue due to downtime according to a 2020 Infrascale survey of C-level SMB executives.
To make matters more concerning, the leading SaaS providers only allow retention and recovery of deleted data for a limited time:
- Dropbox: 120 days
- Microsoft 365: 30 days
- Google Workplace: 30 days
- Salesforce: 15 days
- Box: 14 days
Afterwards, the data is gone forever (without another solution in place, that is.)
All of your critical data stored in SaaS apps requires back-up. And when disaster strikes, it is not the time to find out that your backup solution isn’t equipped to help you actually recover from disaster.
Securing SaaS Apps is a Complex, Multi-Faceted Challenge
There’s no shortage of threats to SaaS apps. Speaking with Dark Reading, Ryan Kalember, executive vice president of cybersecurity strategy at Proofpoint, recently described Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace as, “a one-stop shop if you’re an attacker. It’s all you need from an infrastructure perspective.” As author Kelly Sheridan continues, “Attackers know the value of data stored in the Microsoft platform and how they can effectively get to it.”
Insider threats include well-meaning, but negligent employees in addition to disgruntled employees with malicious intent. In the “State of the Insider Threats in the Digital Workplace” survey conducted by BetterCloud, 91% of respondents felt vulnerable to insider threats.
Applications such as BetterCloud helps organizations tackle SaaS Ops challenges like user lifecycle management and file security. But backing up is another challenge that remains for all organizations – but especially small and mid-sized businesses.
SaaS Backup Should Alleviate Headaches – Not Add to Them
SaaS backup solutions should provide peace of mind that if incidents such as ransomware occur, the impact on your business won’t be disastrous. Implementing a SaaS Backup solution should alleviate headaches, by allowing businesses to overcome the complex management and backup limitations inherent in their SaaS applications.
Look for solutions such as Infrascale Cloud Application Backup (ICAB) that are easy to deploy, install, and manage directly from one unified console. ICAB offers operations and cost controls, including cloud-based, simple deployments; easy, non-destructive anywhere/anytime restores; and an economical, pay-as-you consume pricing model. IT security teams shouldn’t have to choose between comprehensive data protection and ease of management with their SaaS backup solution.
Set It and Forget It – Rare, Yet Possible
Few things in life are “set it and forget it.” Infrascale provides “set it and forget it” SaaS backup, with end-to-end automated backups or on-demand; recover everything or granular & targeted; restore online or offline; pick from unlimited version history; and recover 24x7x365. With Infrascale Cloud Application Backup (ICAB), your SaaS data is always protected and always available… on your time. Infrascale provides unlimited SaaS data backup history – mitigating the risk of data loss from human error, data corruption, malware/ransomware, and gaps in retention policy.
Give us 20 minutes to show you how ICAB can eliminate your backup headaches. Click here to schedule a call.
