SaaS Data Loss – The Possibility Exists

Your organization might have important data stored in the cloud. From important statistics to data required for daily needs, your organization might rely heavily on the cloud for its day-to-day work. However, what if this data stored in the cloud is lost? Getting a cloud provider for storing your applications and data might just not be enough. Having a cloud provider for your application and service does not mean that you are protected from ALL types of data loss and actually you are much more vulnerable than you were when you worked on-premise. SaaS Data Loss is an issue for most organisations.

What this article is about:

Possible reasons for data loss in cloud

Here is a look at some of the possible reasons for data loss in cloud.

1. The data center of your Cloud system won’t always retrieve your data

A Spiceworks study reported that over 45 percent of respondents had reported data loss in their organization. Fourteen percent of those respondents said that they were unable to retrieve the valuable information they had lost. This is a common misconception. The data center of your SaaS provider won’t always retrieve your data.

2. Viruses

You don’t need a virus running rampant on your PC. While an antivirus program is a necessity and might help you ward off threats, your cloud data can still be taken for a ride if there is a malicious virus that manages to thrive on your system.

3. Phishing

A recent invention, phishing enables hackers to access your system and cloud data. If you click on a fraudulent link (that actually looks reliable), your data might be compromised and easily available to hackers. An ideal example is the Gmail Phishing Scam.

4. User error

User error is also one of the biggest reasons for data loss. Reportedly, Google has never lost any app data.If you are using the cloud; you need to be careful that the data has synced. Users makes mistakes, unitentionally, or even on purpose – mistakes which can be noticed only later, a lot later after it can be fixed.

5. Third-party applications

You might be using Google everywhere, but do remember that the apps you use in Google may have bugs. Protection from data loss is not guaranteed when using a third-party application to store data. Data loss is more likely to occur when there is syncing between a number of devices at the same time.

Statistics about Cloud-to-Cloud Data Loss

The Symantec 2013 report titled “Avoiding the Hidden Costs of the Cloud” states that nearly 66 percent of organizations experience recovery failure. Thirty-seven percent of SMBs had experienced data loss from the cloud.

Thirty-seven percent of SMBs had experienced data loss from the cloud. The Aberdeen Group’s report “SaaS Data Loss: The Problem You Didn’t Know You Had” also stated that nearly 32 percent of companies surveyed had experienced data loss in the cloud. That’s not all. The Boston Computing Network’s Data Loss Statistics gives a frightening statistic: Sixty percent of the companies that experienced data loss shut down within six months.

Companies Using Cloud-to-Cloud Backup

More than 37 percent of organizations in the U.S back up virtual, physical, and cloud-based servers, a report states. The American Enterprise Bank is one such organization to use cloud-to-cloud backup. The bank was earlier using tape-based backup but saw that it fell short when it came to providing security and being on time. Replacing their old, inefficient system with a good cloud-to-cloud backup infrastructure seemed the right way to go. Thomas, Kayden, Horstemeyer & Risley, LLP is a law firm that has gone the same way. It has also replaced its old,tape-based backup systems with the new backup and recovery solutions. As an intellectual property law firm, data is an asset for them and something they cannot bear to lose.

Conclusion

If you are an organization solely relying on Salesforce, Office 365 and Google Apps to save all your data, be aware. First, there are many ways to lose data. In addition, within a big organization, you have tons of users and team members handling cloud accounts. Thus, the probability of a mistake happening is not that low. You need to have a secure cloud-to-cloud backup system that stores all the organizational information for you to access and retrieve anytime, anywhere.

SaaS providers as Office 365 and Google Apps, store your deleted data for only 30-90 days and do not protect you from any malicious attacks. You will not be able to get any data after that period, and these are not ideal backup solutions that you can rely on.

Similarly, Salesforce doesn’t offer automatic backup options, and if you are a Salesforce admin,you would know that the data backup process is not satisfactory. You can request a weekly export of data to backup for a certain fee, but that’s weekly and much can happen in a week’s time for an organization. Moreover, some users can enter the data in the same field, which can result in conflict and incorrect data.

To avoid such hassles, you need fully automated daily cloud to cloud backups like CloudAlly to protect your online data. Having a cloud-to-cloud backup ensures that your cloud data is backed up on SaaS/PaaS clouds or your own data center. It stores data in an encrypted form, and only authorized personnel can access it. That’s 100% SAFE. Start to backup your cloud account with a Free 14 day trial.

Now that you know more about the possibilities of Saas data loss, you might want to have a look at what we created for you…