What Data do SaaS and Tech Companies Need to Backup and Why?

The annual growth rate for the SaaS and technology markets are predicted to rise by 18% and 4.5% in 2021, respectively–and won’t be slowing down any time soon. As SaaS and technology companies continue to see growth and more users, they need to be prepared to effectively manage and protect their growing abundance of data.

One layer of protection for enterprise companies utilizing platforms like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspaces, is data back-up. Backing up data creates a secondary copy of your data that can be used as a single source of truth, in the event data is lost, damaged, or breached.

We’re going to break down what it means to backup data, what kind of data should be backed up, and why it’s essential for companies to do so.

Type of Data You Need to Backup

You may be wondering what specific data should be backed up. In short, companies need to backup all their data, especially data that isn’t easily replaced or covered.

While SaaS platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspaces offer some data management capabilities, they operate on a shared responsibility model. Meaning, they do not back up your data.

And, there may be more data to back up than you expect.

• On average, 63% of enterprise businesses store more than 100TB of data;
• And, 73% of enterprises expect their cloud storage needs to grow even more over the next two years.

As the volume of enterprise data continues to grow, you need to know the specifics of what data you want to preserve. This includes both internal and external data:

• User data: Backing up user data should be a top priority. This includes user email inboxes, applications, folders, files, and documents.
• Finance data: Important financial accounts and documents, reports, spreadsheets, and records of employees and customers.
• Sales and customer data: This could include confidential or HIPAA-sensitive information or important information and records of a customer.
• Marketing and communications: Marketing collateral, reports, directories, as well as all internal and external communications, should be backed up.

Why SaaS and Technology Companies Need to Backup Data

Over 90% of enterprises utilize cloud technology. For many organizations, the cloud offers more security and reduces the costs of storing data on-prem. However, using the cloud poses new risks companies need to anticipate. Specifically, cloud services can increase the risk of:

• Accidental data deletion
• Data loss
• User error
• Malicious activity and cyberattacks, like ransomware or malware
• Data overwrites via third-party apps or native recovery
• Application outages
• Natural disasters

That’s why it’s important for your enterprise to consider a backup solution.