Why Google Drive Isn’t Backup

Data Backup is a Cost of Business

Your organization’s uptime depends on mission-critical data availability, cloud data storage companies rely on data availability for profit, and yet one-third of SaaS end users report data loss in the cloud.

Learn how Google Drive protects your data, where it doesn’t provide data loss assurance, and ways you can proactively secure crucial data against loss.

What Google Drive Provides for Your Data

In Google Drive, admins maintain control over user data sharing and users have universal access through the cloud than an on-prem file server and can lower your maintenance costs exponentially.

Here are a few more things Google Drive does for your data:

• Infrastructure high availability (HA) with erasure code
• Replicas in different locations to protect against hardware failure
• Disaster recovery plans in case of a flood, fire, hurricane or another catastrophe affecting their data centers
• Data loss prevention for sensitive data stored in Google Drive to protect your credit card numbers and confidential information from digital predators

Google Drive is an excellent option for cloud data storage for an SME transitioning from on-prem file server to more accessibility, infrastructure scalability, and more efficient file storage. Keep in mind that cloud data storage doesn’t equal cloud data security. Read on for the Google Drive cloud data risks you should know.

Risks of Relying on Google Drive for Data Backup

End user error is the most pervasive data loss risk for SMEs. Since software is not sophisticated enough to differentiate between an intentional command and a key error, data in Google Drive is only as safe as your team is flawless. Long story short: Accidental deletion is the number one cause of data loss for SMEs and Google Drive doesn’t protect your data from it.

More risks of using Google Drive as your only data backup plan include:

• Interrupted service for your customers: To be successful in the digital space your company needs to be faster and more consistent than your competition and downtime means interruptions in service
• Delayed response to data loss: Although they protect against data loss from a natural disaster, the time it takes Google to get your data back online costs you unnecessary downtime (especially when there are faster data recovery solutions)
• Loss of mission-critical data: User error is a cost of business that your data loss prevention plan must account for
• Cost of data replacement: You can lose customers and spend thousands of dollars in redundant data production time if they lose a critical file to user error
• Google Groups or Sites data loss: Google Drive has no native backup capabilities for Google Groups or Sites data, meaning it can simply disappear

Why doesn’t Google Drive protect against user error? The three main players in the cloud storage space–Amazon, Google, and Microsoft–provide a service for profit. While they appreciate that their customers need to have access to data and proactively protect against data loss due to disaster or security breaches on their end, they would have to spend an inordinate amount on time chasing after each file lost from accidental file deletion.

What Cloud to Cloud Data Backup Provides

Cloud to cloud backup solutions account for the inevitability of human error and resulting data loss. Excellent cloud data backup services will give your company better insight into existing data and use the most advanced file systems to keep data secure.

What cloud to cloud data backup provides that Google Drive can’t:

• Protection against internal and external threats to company data: Ransomware and DDOS attacks are the primary targets of any SecOps team’s data protection plan, but what about the disgruntled employee or ex-employee who has access to your data? You need to plan for all data loss scenarios and bolster your cloud data protection to account for these loopholes in Google Drive’s security
• Cloud to cloud data backup: Expediency breeds productivity leads to higher month over month growth. Common data loss shouldn’t slow down your organization’s growth, and cloud to cloud data backup ensures data availability no matter what unexpected scenarios arise
• Self-healing files: Pairing Ubuntu 16.04 OS and ZFS gives your data a smaller footprint, and ZFS automatically detects and restores any files affected by malware and other file corruption

Google Drive functions very well as your cloud data storage tool, but it’s not cloud data backup for an SME. Intelligent data backup is part of every growing organization’s cost of business. You can spend the money and time after a breach or user error or you can invest in cloud data protection proactively to prevent downtime and ensure your Google Drive data is available when needed.

Find out how Backupify’s cloud to cloud data backup protects and enhances your business’s Google Drive data now.