Global SaaS vendors like Salesforce and Microsoft don’t take any responsibility for your data or how you use their application, only for their own infrastructure and operation. The main reasons for losing data - human errors, malicious actions, ransomware or cybercrime - are not covered by your SaaS vendor, as illustrated in the chart below. But a recent incident suggests even relying on a single vendor’s ‘guaranteed’ infrastructure is still a risk.
One of Australia’s largest pension funds with USD90 billion (AUD135 Billion) invested on behalf of 647,000 members suffered a Google Cloud outage that crippled it’s customer services for almost two weeks in May. The outage occurred when Google Cloud deleted the servers UniSuper was running in the Google Cloud without warning due to a bug in Google’s software. But UniSuper had an ace up their sleeve as they also “had backups in place with an additional service provider”. They stated that “These backups have minimised data loss, and significantly improved the ability of UniSuper and Google Cloud to complete the restoration.”
Google’s official response recognised the importance of independent third party backup software in saving the day, stating that “third party backup software, were instrumental in aiding the rapid restoration.”
Our blog has more details of the incident HERE.
To be clear, “Google Cloud” as used by UniSuper in the incident described above and “Google Workspace” are different products. But the reality is that despite extensive engineering efforts to reduce failures in cloud environments software bugs and system bugs affect all systems and all software. So the incident serves as a wake-up call to any organisation relying on single vendor infrastructure, be that Google, Microsoft or other providers: independent backup is a key factor to reduce infrastructure related risks. While simultaneously protecting from the main human related reasons for losing data - human errors, malicious actions, ransomware or cybercrime.
Our solution is SEP CAPS - a completely independent cloud based backup. SEP CAPS stores data in local data centres separately from the the major SaaS vendors. Regional locations include Sydney Australia (Asia Pacific), London UK (EMEA), Frankfurt Germany (EU), Copenhagen Denmark (EU), Washington DC USA (Americas) and Toronto Canada (Americas). More information is available HERE.
Reasons for Data Loss
Human Error 73%
- Accidental deletion & overwrites 63%
- Closing accounts 10%
Hacking & Insider Threats 20%
- Hackers 13%
- Malicious deletes 7%
3rd Party Software 7%
Source: Aberdeen Group
For more information on SEP CAPS please see our web site SEP CAPS page and contact CustomTech (email info@custom.tech or call) to arrange a FREE evaluation and discuss your needs.
Interested? But got questions? A free initial discussion can help provide the answers, book HERE.
