Remote work has intensified data protection challenges

Barracuda Networks has released a new report titled: The State of Office 365 backup, which reveals that the worldwide shift to remote work during the pandemic has intensified the challenges associated with protecting Office 365 data.

The report findings revealed that nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of UK businesses are concerned about ransomware attacks facing its Microsoft Office 365 (O365) data. Furthermore, nearly half (45 per cent) of UK based organisations have already experienced a ransomware attack, and 55 per cent know an organisation that has experienced a ransomware attack and struggled with recovery.

To shed light on this issue, the report surveyed global IT decision makers in the UK to capture their opinions and perspectives about Office 365, data security, backup and recovery. The findings revealed that a comprehensive data backup solution with unlimited storage is an important priority for 84 per cent of UK organisations this year.

It also revealed that granular restoration of Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams data is an important factor for three quarters (76 per cent) of IT decision makers; the ability to download a copy of recovered items is important for 89 per cent of decision makers, and, backing up a cloud application is important for 79 per cent.

Furthermore, seven in 10 businesses (70 per cent) that they are concerned about complying with data privacy requirements, suggesting that regulatory concern is as much of a motivator for cloud backup solutions as security and accidental deletion. This is understandable when fines for violations can be as much as €20 million or a certain percentage of the previous year’s annual revenue, whichever is greater.

When asked about their attitudes to cloud backup solutions, a majority of IT leaders expressed enthusiasm for a simple, all in one licensing solution (71 per cent). 68 per cent also would prefer a SaaS (Software as a Service) backup for O365, so that there is no hardware to maintain. And 79 per cent stated that being able to sign up and start running back up right away is an important factor to them.

Tim Jefferson, SVP, Engineering for Data, Networks and Application Security, Barracuda, said: “With the rapid shift to remote work dramatically increasing reliance on SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams over the past year, protecting Office 365 data is a more crucial requirement than ever before—and more challenging. That’s why organisations are looking for comprehensive, easy-to-use backup solutions that are fast to get up and running and include capabilities like granular retention that aren’t included in Microsoft’s native functionality.”