Cyber Security Research from BackupVault

Blueraq Networks Ltd, trading as BackupVault and a provider of online backup specialising in the SME market, found that a large majority of their clients did not know why external backup of cloud applications was so vital.

BackupVault founder and CEO Rob Stevenson explains: “A staggering 93% of our SME clients didn’t know that their cyber-insurance was only effective if they had external backup in place until we told them, and 8 in 10 were not aware of the Shared Responsibility Model used by SaaS services when they came to us.”

SMEs form the backbone of UK business, accounting for 99.9% of the business population, so this lack of awareness regarding the need for reliable online backup is a cause for concern.

Stevenson continues: “The increase in availability of SaaS applications has been a mixed blessing for our SMEs – on the one hand, it has made software more affordable and quicker to install, but on the other, it has led to a tremendous amount of business-critical data being uploaded to cloud platforms and left unsecured.”

The main cause of data loss is human failure with accidental deletion and user error. Many SMEs do not have in-house IT teams and without that IT expertise, knowledge and guidance, it leaves SMEs vulnerable. Even if a business does have cyber insurance, cover is only guaranteed if they also have secure and offsite backup in place.

Stevenson concludes: “People know they should be implementing third-party backup – but not why it’s so important. Our survey covered over 10,000 Microsoft 365 mailboxes and feedback showed that cloud services lull users into a false sense of security and make them think their data is safe just because it can be accessed from anywhere. But the cloud is not immune to human error, and without backup in place, most SMEs would not survive a major data loss incident.”