When the global COVID-19 crisis commenced, the speed and magnitude with which managed service providers (MSPs) transitioned clients to a work from home scenario meant navigating many new challenges. Now, countries, cities, and businesses are in phased openings around the world. New challenges come with the transition back to the office, and some employees may continue to work remotely for some time to allow for proper physical distancing.
The current working from home situation is causing a surge in the implementation of Office 365 and G Suite. As you set clients up with Office 365 or G Suite, remember that SaaS data is not immune to permanent data loss. Neither Microsoft nor Google make guarantees when it comes to restoring inadvertently or maliciously deleted data or encrypted in a ransomware attack. MSPs need to help clients meet business continuity, compliance, and security requirements beyond the limited native recovery capabilities of Office 365 and G Suite. Cloud data is at risk more than ever with a large remote workforce.
When clients ask, ”what events could lead to data loss?” start with education on the following points:
- Accidental Deletion and User Mistakes: More often than not, data is knowingly deleted by the user or organization, only to later realize that it is still needed. Information can also unknowingly be overwritten or corrupted by users and third-party apps.
- Overwriting Data: SaaS applications hold large amounts of data that is constantly added to and updated. Overwriting data commonly occurs when large data sets are imported into the application via bulk uploads or when integrated third-party applications are used to manage the data inside the base SaaS application.
- Malicious Actions: People who are planning to leave an organization or are afraid of being fired often delete data before they leave. Hackers can also be the culprit, surpassing security systems to delete or corrupt data.
Once you have listed some of the ways that Office 365 and G Suite data can be lost, educate your clients on the value of SaaS backup and the role it plays in securing business data currently stored in the cloud platforms that they use.
As an advisor to your clients, it’s important to let them know that if data loss occurs, they’re often out of luck unless they have a backup solution. Explaining the value of reducing business risk with SaaS Protection, an independent backup separated from the SaaS app itself is necessary to avoid the most common data loss pitfalls.
Engineered to be comprehensive data protection in the cloud, SaaS Protection gives you consistently reliable backups, granular restores and exports, security for data compliance and regulatory needs, and world-class 24/7/365 support. Learn more about Datto SaaS Protection here.
Caitlin Beckman is senior manager, product marketing, Datto. Read more Datto guest blogs here.
