If there is a What the recent earnings reports from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have made clear, is that their cloud businesses are booming.
While the transition to the cloud is well underway, many companies are not paying attention to a key aspect of this growth: the dramatic increase in data generated by SaaS without adequate protection. . This exposure can put companies at greater risk for ransomware attacks, breaches, compliance issues, and more.
The growth of the SaaS business is rapid and inevitable. Gartner expects End-user spending on SaaS grows more than 18% to $171.9 billion in 2022 from $145.5 billion in 2021 — and it’s easy to see why.
The SaaS model delivers significant value to both service providers and customers, from reducing costs to simplifying management and maintenance. The benefits of SaaS are many: It eliminates the need to install and configure software; it gives customers more financial flexibility by switching from licensing fees to subscriptions; no need to purchase and maintain hardware; and new releases and upgrades are rolled out automatically.
Without the right policies in place, organizations are often less likely to have visibility into the SaaS data they actually have; whether the data is compliant, protected or compromised.
But despite the rapid pace of development and the multitude of benefits, there are still significant challenges associated with managing and protecting SaaS data. It’s a problem that can only get worse, as for many organizations, SaaS is their fastest-growing piece of data.
Cloud provider default retention policy is not enough
Each cloud service provider (CSP) and SaaS provider has its own data retention policy, and when that policy expires, it is the customer’s responsibility to back up, protect, and if necessary, restore the data. in the event of a cyber attack.
Not only is the customer responsible, but data retention policies may vary by provider and type of SaaS data. In today’s world of rampant ransomware attacks and strict privacy and compliance regulations, leaving data unmanaged and unprotected is a risk few organizations can take. presently.
Let’s look at Microsoft 365 as an example. Microsoft 365 adoption has been phenomenal, with nearly 300 million users and over 50% growth in subscribers in the past two years. It is one of the most popular enterprise SaaS applications, however backup options are limited in terms of data stored on Azure.
