Ransomware and SaaS Raise the Bar for Disaster Recovery Requirements

The 451 Take

Just behind data growth, meeting disaster recovery and data protection requirements was the top storage pain point for respondents to the Voice of the Enterprise: Storage, Data Management and Disaster Recovery 2021 study. Disaster recovery (DR) and data protection have long been challenging for organizations, and meeting customer requirements has only become more difficult with the rise of SaaS and other cloud platforms, as well ransomware threats becoming more prevalent.

Today’s data protection and DR tools have several key capabilities that are rapidly growing in importance. First, the rise of cloud storage is having an impact on both primary storage and secondary storage operations such as backup, archiving and DR. The ability to leverage cloud storage resources as an alternative to on-premises storage infrastructure is already well underway; 59% of respondents in the same study reported that their on-premises storage budgets have been impacted by the rising use of public cloud storage. Beyond cost saving, organizations must also meet security and compliance needs. By storing backup and archive data in a public cloud or service provider cloud environment, customers can potentially benefit from repositories that are protected with immutable formats to ensure recovery even when operational control and data access is wrested away from the organization in a ransomware incident.

test their DR more than twice a year have taken hours to recover from their most significant outage

have had outages that cost their organizations over $100,000

of recent outages have been caused by hardware failure

of recent outages have been caused by software failure

rely on their cloud vendor for backup and recovery of their data stored in SaaS platforms

of recent outages have been caused by security issues (e.g., ransomware, virus) 50% 52%

are storing their gold copy of data on public cloud storage

26% 33%

are extremely confident in their ability to recover data from a ransomware incident using current backup tools

are storing their gold copy of data on off-premises tape

73% are increasing their spending for data protection as a result of the potential threats of ransomware

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On the DR side, testing continues to be a major gap for organizations, which highlights the importance of automation and intelligent management tools to help ensure that a DR implementation will work properly when the need arises. Limited budgets will ultimately force organizations to seek out new or updated offerings that can provide high value while helping keep costs under control.

Business Impact

Disaster recovery continues to be a key concern. Nearly a third (31%) of respondents experienced an outage in the last two years, and 61% of recent outages cost organizations over $100,000 in losses in the form of lost worker productivity, data loss, lost revenue, lost customer loyalty, damaged reputation and other consequences. When asked about their most significant outage, 55% of respondents said it took hours to recover, while 27% reported that it took days to return to operation. Given that customer expectations for minimal data loss and rapid restoration of services continue to rise, DR and data protection will need to evolve to meet these requirements.

Organizations are turning to cloud for data protection. Forty-one percent of organizations are using hybrid cloud deployments that use on-premises backup resources in conjunction with cloud for long-term storage and remote data protection. Twenty-two percent are primarily relying on cloud services to handle their data protection needs. In the VotE: Storage Data Management and Disaster Recovery 2021 survey, 51% of respondents said they are using cloud-based backup, while 37% have cloud-based disaster recovery in use. Only 37% of respondents reported that they are using on-premises data protection exclusively.

Ransomware and security are growing threats. Thirty percent of our respondents said their most recent outages were at least partially caused by security issues such as ransomware and viruses. In the study, 73% of respondents said they plan to increase their spending on data protection as a result of the potential threat of ransomware. Only about a quarter (26%) of respondents indicated that they are extremely confident in their ability to recover data from a ransomware incident.

Protection for SaaS data is a growing requirement. The widespread transition to work from home and travel limitations resulting from the pandemic highlighted the need for organizations to deploy online backup and SaaS-specific backup to protect the data of their remote workers.

Looking Ahead

Disaster recovery and data protection will always be important priorities for organizations since they serve as the safety net when infrastructure, security and human errors create workload and service outages. Traditional backup policies emphasize the need to have multiple copies of backups stored in multiple locations while leveraging multiple mediums. While off-site tape is still a widely used format for long-term retention, the slow recovery times and potential for tape media failure have driven an increasing number of organizations to consider using cloud storage archive and object storage systems for longterm retention with faster recoverability and data processing capabilities compared to off-site tape.

The threat of ransomware also puts pressure on organizations to make sure their backup repositories are protected from attacks by using air gaps or immutable file formats. Respondents on average had 1.6 golden copies for recovery in their environments, although we expect that number to go up to provide additional protection in the case of a large-scale disaster such as a fire or earthquake, which could knock a local datacenter offline.

The data stored in SaaS is another area where data protection is likely to evolve. At this point, half of respondents are relying on their cloud providers for backup and data protection, although we expect that third-party offerings will give customers alternatives to enhance the data protection and portability of their SaaS data.

Due to the Shared Responsibility Model, relying on your cloud providers for backup and retention is not enough, and puts your organization’s data at risk. Backupify is a cloud-to-cloud backup solution that defends against data protection gaps in your SaaS applications. This solution offers comprehensive backup and recovery for cloud data associated with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

Backupify protects against permanent data loss and offers the ability to recover data quickly following a ransomware attack or other data-loss event with 3x daily point-in-time backups, managed through one pane of glass. The backups are stored securely in the private Datto Cloud with files, folders, settings, and permissions intact for fast restores of everything from a single item to an entire user account. This data protection solution delivers backup, search, restore, and export for Microsoft 365 and supports Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. For Google Workspace, Backupify supports Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar, Contacts, and Shared Drives.