Remote working began as an interim arrangement for many businesses since the COVID-19 outbreak. However, this mode of work has persisted into 2021, and so has new backup and data protection trends.
The impact on business IT systems includes investing in more devices for remote staff and revamping networks and applications to allow access on a larger scale. Consequently, organisations have had to revisit data protection strategies as there are more environments to protect.
Is Remote Data Protected?
In terms of business continuity, it seems that IT initiatives resulting from the pandemic will prevail into the future. Considering that data centres and cloud-based applications are accessible, an organisation’s workforce can operate just as effectively from home.
But what does this mean for data backup and recovery?
While working off-premise disregards the need for physical disaster recovery (DR) planning, your backup systems might not be configured to run on these highly distributed devices. Before this, most people perceived supporting technologies like backup as less critical than line-of-business software.
Things have changed; COVID-19 has sparked an acceleration in cloud adoption, SaaS (software as a service) adoption, and ransomware. Microsoft Office 365, in particular, became an important application.
Read More: Overcoming the Remote Work Challenges with Microsoft 365 Office Cloud Backup
Areas of Data Backup Impacted by the Pandemic
1. Local backups & data compliance
Locally backing up data is never the go-to for IT teams, but it was the only option in the early period of the pandemic. Certain network-based endpoint backup tools cannot support remote users, and those that could had to work with limited bandwidth.
As supplier support for remote users improves, IT leaders can check the licensing of their backup software to ensure all endpoints are covered. Once a secure remote backup system is in place, employees can delete local backups to avoid data compliance problems.
2. Protecting SaaS applications
Another solution that helped businesses adapt to working from home is software-as-a-service. SaaS applications like Microsoft Office 365 has been on the rise for the past year among industry leaders. Many users often assume that their data is automatically backed up to the ‘cloud’, but this is a myth.
Despite the growing usage of SaaS applications, their backup capabilities simply aren’t enough. Third-party vendors backup typically cover the most popular SaaS applications. It is then up to the consumers to devise their own backup tactics to protect their data from accidental/malicious deletion or proceed with data recovery during outages.
3. Continued adoption of cloud-to-cloud backup
Now that cloud and SaaS-based data backup adoption have skyrocketed, experts don’t see this trend reversing. With the erratic economic climate, organisations turned to consumption-based pricing models for various aspects of IT.
Organisations are also increasingly opting for cloud-to-cloud backup, with more on-premise suppliers supporting backups for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and so on. The migration of more critical applications from data centres to the cloud makes backup all the more vital.
Read More: Clearing the Myth: Why the Cloud is Not a Backup
4. Taking ransomware more seriously
Ransomware attacks have increased tremendously due to the pandemic — 485% last year, to be exact. Needless to say, no organisation is exempt from falling victim. Fortunately, backup providers are developing ransomware detection and “clean copy” recovery techniques to aid companies in recovering data safely.
What Aegis Can Do For You
Aegis Cloud Office 365 Backup (COB) is a comprehensive business solution that allows backup and restoration of Office 365 data. This includes applications such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams. We are here to safeguard critical business data from security threats, retention policy gaps and, most aggravating of all, human error.
Rest assured that Aegis COB ensures quick data recovery while providing unlimited cloud backup storage. Find out more about our extensive cloud hosting and disaster recovery services today.
