What’s next for cloud backup?

Cloud adoption was already strong heading into 2020. According to a study by O’Reilly, 88% of businesses were using the cloud in some form in January 2020. The global pandemic just accelerated the move to SaaS tools. This seismic shift where businesses live day-to-day means a massive amount of business data is making its way into the cloud.

All this data is absolutely critical for core business functions. However, it is all too often mistakenly considered “safe” thanks to blind trust in the SaaS platform. But human error, cyberattacks, platform updates and software integrations can all easily compromise or erase that data … and totally destroy a business.

According to Microsoft, 94% of businesses report security benefits since moving to the cloud. Although there are definitely benefits, data is by no means fully protected – and the threat to cloud data continues to rise, especially as it ends up spread across multiple applications.

Organizations continue to overlook the simple steps they can take to better protect cloud data and their business. In fact, our 2020 Ecommerce Data Protection Survey found that one in four businesses has already experienced data loss that immediately impacted sales and operations.

Cloud data security illusions

Many companies confuse cloud storage with cloud backup. Cloud storage is just that – you’ve stored your data in the cloud. But what if, three years later, you need a record of that data and how it was moved or changed for an audit? What if you are the target of a cyberattack and suddenly your most important data is no longer accessible? What if you or an employee accidentally delete all the files tied to your new product line?

Simply storing data in the cloud does not mean it is fully protected. The ubiquity of cloud services like Box, Dropbox, Microsoft 365, Google G Suite/Drive, etc., has created the illusion that cloud data is protected and easily accessible in the event of a data loss event. Yet even the most trusted providers manage data by following the Shared Responsibility Model.

The same goes for increasingly popular business apps like BigCommerce, GitHub, Shopify, Slack, Trello, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Zendesk and thousands of other SaaS applications. Cloud service providers only fully protect system-level infrastructure and data. So while they ensure reliability and recovery for system-wide failures, the cloud app data of individual businesses is still at risk.

In the current business climate, human errors are even more likely. With the pandemic increasing the amount of remote work, employees are navigating constant distractions tied to health concerns, increasing family needs and an inordinate amount of stress.

Complicating things further, many online tools do not play nicely with each other. APIs and integrations can be a challenge when trying to move or share data between apps. Without a secure backup, one cyberattack, failed integration, faulty update or click of the mouse could wipe out the data a business needs to survive.

While top SaaS platforms continue to expand their security measures, data backup and recovery is missing from the roadmap. Businesses need to take matters into their own hands.

Current cloud backup best practices

In its most rudimentary form, a traditional cloud backup essentially makes a copy of cloud data to support business continuity and disaster recovery initiatives. Proactively protecting cloud data ensures that if that business-critical data is compromised, corrupted, deleted or inaccessible, they still have immediate access to a comprehensive, usable copy of the data needed to avoid business disruption.

From multi-level user access restrictions, password managers and regularly timed manual downloads, there are many basic (even if tedious) ways for businesses to better protect their cloud data. Some companies have invested in building more robust backup solutions to keep their cloud business data safe. However, homegrown backup solutions are costly and time intensive as they require constant updates to keep pace with ever-changing APIs.

In contrast, third-party backup solutions can provide an easier to manage, cost/time-efficient way to protect cloud data. There is a wide range of offerings though – some more reputable and secure than others. Any time business data is entrusted to a third party, reputability and security of that vendor must take center stage. If they have your data, they need to protect it.

Cloud backup providers need to meet stringent security and regulatory requirements so look for explicit details about how they secure your data. As business data continues to move to the cloud, storage limits, increasingly complex integrations and new security concerns will heighten the need for comprehensive cloud data protection.

Evolution

The trend of business operations moving to the cloud started long before the quarantine. Nevertheless, the cloud storage and security protocols most businesses currently rely on to protect cloud data are woefully insufficient.

Critical business data used to be stored (and secured) in a central location. Companies invested significant resources to manage walls of servers. With SaaS, everything is in the cloud and distributed – apps running your store, your account team, your mailing list, your website, etc. Business data in the backend of each SaaS tool looks very different and isn’t easily transferable.

All the data has become decentralized, and most backups can’t keep pace. It isn’t a matter of “if” a business will one day have a data loss event, it’s “when”. We need to evolve cloud backups into a comprehensive, distributed cloud data protection platform that secures as much business-critical data as possible across various SaaS platforms.

As businesses begin to rethink their approach to data protection in the cloud era, business backups will need to alleviate the worry tied to losing data – even in the cloud. True business data protection means not worrying about whether an online store will be taken out, a third-party app will cause problems, an export is fully up to date, where your data is stored, if it is compliant or if you have all of the information needed to fully (and easily) get apps back up and running in case of an issue.

Delivering cohesive cloud data protection, regardless of which application it lives in, will help businesses break free from backup worry. The next era of cloud data protection needs to let business owners and data security teams sleep easier.