Lack of Awareness Among IT Professionals Regarding Cloud Protection

Backupify, Inc., provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solutions for Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, announced the results of a study entitled Protecting Data in the Cloud: The Truth About SaaS Backup.

The study was conducted by Spiceworks, Inc., the vertical network for IT, in order to better understand the growth of SaaS applications as well as how data is currently being backed up in SaaS environments. The report sheds light on how more than 200 IT professionals who use or plan to use SaaS applications or storage think about data protection in the cloud.

Cloud Continues to Gain Traction
The survey found that 54% of IT professionals have implemented SaaS applications in one form or another while 14% plan to implement them within the next six months. Some of the most commonly used SaaS applications cited in the study include Google Apps (46%), Dropbox (45%) and Microsoft Office 365 (43%).

SaaS adoption is not relegated to specific departments, and the survey went on to find that of those who use or plan to use SaaS applications at their companies, more than half (55%) stated all departments in their company use the same SaaS applications, proving that SaaS applications are quickly becoming commonplace across businesses.

Trusting Cloud But Not Backing It Up
Given the rise in SaaS adoption, it’s natural that more companies are now storing their data in SaaS applications. And they’re storing critical data. According to the survey, 81% of IT professionals that use or plan to use SaaS applications feel that the data stored in their SaaS applications is “very to extremely” important. While this data has been deemed critical, the survey discovered that more than half of these respondents (52%) don’t backup or plan to backup data within their SaaS applications.

In following up with these IT professionals, 79% responded that they believe their SaaS application is “being backed up by the provider” when asked the reason they don’t backup their company’s data. Another 33% responded that they are unaware of any backup solutions for their SaaS apps.

The 48% who responded that they’re backing up their company’s data can rest assured in the event that data loss occurs since the survey also found that a large percentage of the respondents who use SaaS applications have experienced some type of data loss or loss of access to data within their SaaS applications. Thirty-five% of these IT professionals have lost access to data they needed during critical times while 15% reported that they had experienced losing data or data corruption within their SaaS applications.

“Companies using SaaS applications haven’t been properly educated on the risk of data loss,” said Rob May, CEO, Backupify. “The Spiceworks survey reaffirms that IT professionals unfortunately have a misconception that their crucial company information is safe and secure in the cloud. IT pros reported storing extremely important data in their SaaS applications yet aren’t backing the data up. The report reveals that data loss in the cloud can and does happen and as more businesses adopt SaaS applications across departments, having a cloud-to-cloud backup solution is a must.”

Copy of the report (registration needed)