Conquering Security Risks in the Cloud

The cloud is responsible for a lot of good things in the world of enterprise. It has simplified storage, reduced costs, and maximized productivity. But there are still many lingering challenges and concerns as new cyber threats evolve.

According to findings from Barracuda, backing up data in the cloud is getting more complex: 57 percent of respondents of the study are responsible for backing up more than two sites, and 35 percent are using multiple cloud services.

In the study titled Closing Backup and Recovery Gaps, Barracuda surveyed more than 1,000 IT professionals, business executives, and backup administrators worldwide to find out more about their data protection strategies.

 

Here are some of the key findings:

• IT decision makers are warming up to the cloud, and the use of the cloud as a secondary backup location is on the rise.
  • 64 percent of global organizations say they replicate backup data to the cloud
  • 36 percent still do not follow this best practice
• IT teams view email, SQL, and proprietary application data as the most common workloads to protect with backup, but SaaS data is not viewed as critical, which puts business continuity at risk.
  • Only 16 percent of respondents report that they back up their SaaS data.
• Office 365 is one of the most popular cloud-based productivity platforms, but Office 365 confusion is exposing firms to significant risk
  • More than 60 percent of SMBs are using Office 365 to drive business success
  • 40 percent are not using any third-party backup tools to protect mission-critical data because they believe Office 365 provides all the backup they need, which is unlikely to be true

 

“While more IT professionals are embracing ways the cloud can support data protection, such as replicating backup data to the cloud, many are making dangerous assumptions about SaaS and cloud data that are putting organizations at risk,” says Chris King, director, Product Management, Data Protection at Barracuda Networks. “IT still needs to consider how data is protected, even after migrating to cloud or SaaS applications.”