Smoking in a Doctor’s Office, SaaS Without Backup and Recovery, and Driving Without a Seatbelt.

Key Takeaway: SaaS applications and services are now business-critical; product leaders must prioritize backup and recovery.

Every generation uncovers hidden dangers in our products, foods, and technologies. In the US, it wasn’t until 1964 that cigarettes were widely accepted as harmful, and it wasn’t until 1991 that all passengers in a vehicle were required to use a seatbelt. These are just a couple of examples among many. We can spend hours discussing realizations from the last century, where previously hidden threats have become mainstream.

Today is no different than the past. In today’s era, there is another hidden danger that needs to be exposed: unprotected SaaS applications. In the last decade, like the explosion of data, SaaS applications and cloud services usage has also exploded. Today, the average midsize organization uses more than 217 SaaS applications. Yet, most of these applications are completely unprotected. If faced with an accidental deletion, corruption, or cyberattack – SaaS customers need to quickly recover their data. The shared responsibility model for SaaS, borrowed from the public cloud, is insufficient. Yes, maintaining 99.9% resilience of your services is critical, but so is recovering the data itself.  

We all know that backup and recovery for SaaS applications are mission-critical.

With SaaS applications and their data under attack and the looming presence of deletions and corruptions, SaaS companies must prioritize ensuring their users can back up, manage, and recover critical data.  

Here are four key reasons why you need to prioritize backup and recovery for your service:

1. It happens. For as long as digital files have existed, accidental deletions and data corruption have continued to go hand-in-glove. From personal photos to entire databases, deletions occur to anyone at any point in time. Your technology may be infallible, but your users are not. In fact, according to a study by Oracle and KPMG, 49% of SaaS users have suffered from data loss in their SaaS applications. Whether your users accidentally delete files, corrupt data, or someone in the organization nukes all data – they need a way to recover their data and restore operations quickly.  ‍
2. SaaS applications have become the #1 target for ransomware. SaaS applications are an easy target for ransomware. Users assume the SaaS company can help them recover their data, and a vulnerable application where the user does not have any backups is the perfect target. Applications focused on HR, Finance, Marketing, and Sales contain critical information and are usually managed by non-technical admins unaware of the dangers of not having SSO, MFA, or even backups for these services. It’s no surprise that more than half of ransomware attacks on SaaS applications are successful. ‍
3. Lack of backup and recovery will impede enterprise adoption. CIOs need to close security gaps and improve visibility into services and applications used company wide. SaaS applications are under more scrutiny now than ever and must meet basic data protection standards before adhering to even higher enterprise-class security and resilience standards.  ‍
4. Recycle bins and days-long retention are not backup. Your users are facing a myriad of threats to their data. What happens if a ransomware attack hits them? What happens if a ransomware attack hits you? Mistakes happen, and sometimes it can take weeks to even realize them after they happen. Your users’ needs have changed – they now require the ability to set their retention periods and recover critical data independently.  

Now is the time for all SaaS companies to prioritize their customer’s data. The sooner, the better. The clock is ticking.

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