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The True Cost of SaaS Data Loss

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Is every business manager familiar with the problem of SaaS data loss ?

Most of the time, the incidents are relatively inconsequential—an accidently deleted email that should have been saved or thirty minutes spent re-writing a client strategy document when Microsoft Word crashed. However, sometimes SaaS data loss is critical and the cost of that lost data is substantial.

In 2015, a study by the Ponemon Institute revealed that the average total cost of a data breach is $3.79 million. But that’s only part of the equation; there’s also cost that goes into recovery. For example, if you lose your Salesforce data with no backup, there is a steep cost to recover it. According to the Salesforce website, the price of recovery is a flat $10,000 USD, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll get everything back

The problem is that most businesses don’t understand the full consequences and total cost of SaaS data loss. They think that data backup and recovery is too big of an initial investment with little reward, but that’s not the case. A little investment now in a backup and recovery solution can save your business thousands if not millions of dollars in the future.

In fact, it’s cheaper to back up your SaaS data cloud-to-cloud than using any other method, and it’s soon to become standard.

Why Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Is the Go-To Solution?

According to storage expert Brien Posey, who spoke with TechTarget, cloud-to-cloud backup will likely become the norm by 2018. Posey said its popularity is twofold. “”First, backup technology is finally starting to catch up to the public cloud, making it more practical to do cloud-to-cloud backups,” Posey said. “Second, and this is the big one, is the economic factor.” The economic factor is huge. For organizations that want to move their data to the cloud, they realize that it’s cheaper than backing up on site and that it makes more economic sense.

And Chris Evans, another storage expert and consultant, agrees. “We may see cloud backup moving to be the de facto standard, with snapshots retained on-prem for user error type restores,” he told TechTarget. “Backup software vendors need [to] and have started to adapt. The biggest losers could be backup appliances in this instance.”

The reality is that using cloud-to-cloud backup to protect your SaaS data saves you time and money, but if that’s still not enough to convince you let’s talk about the real cost of SaaS data loss. It’s not just an annoyance. It heavily affects your company’s bottom line in a multitude of ways. That’s why adding a cloud-to-cloud backup solution isn’t just a good idea; it’s a necessary piece of every risk management plan.

So, how do you determine if a cloud-to-cloud back and recovery solution like CloudAlly is worth it?

To “Real” Cost of SaaS Data Loss!

The first key to understanding the benefit of a data backup and recovery solution is to understand the cost of not having it. The real cost of SaaS data loss isn’t an easy number to pin down. A recent Verizon report suggests that “small” data breaches (less than 100 records lost) cost $18,120 to $35,730, but in a worst-case scenario could reach $555,660. Large data breaches (100 million records or more) cost an average of $5 million to $15.6 million and top out at $200 million.

It’s not just about the data; it’s about the loss of revenue because of the breach, the total labor hours and time for full recovery, the inability to release new products, the lack of support for email and sales, and more. By making an initial investment in your IT department now for a backup and recovery solution, such as CloudAlly, you can avoid all these problems in the future.

Let’s take a look at everything that goes into SaaS data loss so you can better understand the cost of not being protected.

1. Cost of Data

Many times, when businesses attempt to calculate the cost of their SaaS data loss, they forget to calculate the actual financial cost of the lost or compromised data. In many situations, the lost data is vital to performing daily operating functions meaning its loss can create costly work stoppage until the data is restored. In another scenario, the data could be of vital importance to a client/customer and once the loss is discovered a monetary compensation may need to be paid until the problem is fixed.

2. Decreased Productivity

SaaS data loss doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Many times it results in major productivity loss, meaning that any task that needs to be accomplished either takes more time or more resources. These productivity costs can be related to shifting priorities—focused on recovery—which means that less time is spent on daily functions such as building the business, releasing new products, or customer service. In the case of Office 365 data loss, it can even affect your ability to release a new product due to the loss of access to your mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks—all necessary to daily function.

3. Client Loss

When calculating the financial cost of a data breach, one thing you can’t overlook is client loss. It is virtually inevitable that some of your clients will leave when they find out you’ve lost SaaS data, no matter the circumstances. And a lost client is more significant than a smaller monthly revenue stream; client loss can make your business goals, operating expenses, and overall business success more difficult to achieve.

4. Damaged Reputation

Just as clients are wary to continue working with a company that has suffered SaaS data loss, new companies, suppliers, vendors, and even investors may be hesitant as well. Most organizations are risk adverse, and if you show yourself to be a company that is at high risk of downtime or broken confidentiality due to data breach or data loss, then you’ll notice fewer opportunities to build relationships, and a poor reputation that will take time to rebuild.

5. Stunted Business Growth

SaaS data loss or breach can stop growth dead in its tracks. Let’s say you don’t have a cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution and you lose access to Salesforce and all the data contained within. How are you going to make new sales or reach out to new leads if your Salesforce data has been lost or corrupted? In addition, during a data loss period, your sales professionals will be hard pressed to bring on new clients when most of their focus will be on retaining their current list.

6. SLA Penalties

Most service level agreements (SLAs) include a promise of a consistent level of service. In many cases, SaaS data loss or a data breach can result in slow or diminished customer service, which means that your business could owe regulatory penalties. Whether it’s fair or not, if a business has downtime as a result of data loss and it cannot fulfill its SLAs, you may take an unforeseen hit to your profit due to penalties.

7. Recovery

A 2014 study from the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council (PDF) revealed that 25% of respondents believe recovery efforts consumed staff time and this has impacted the business. If you lose data without a cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution in place, getting your data back isn’t as simple as snapping your fingers. Hours will be required to recover the data—if it’s recoverable at all—and the cost of employing a full-time data recovery specialist must be taken into account as well. Recovery may also include the need for a new service or piece of equipment to ensure that the problem does not recur.

Downtime Cost Calculator

To help your organization determine how much a cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution, such as CloudAlly, is worth we’ve created a quick and easy-to-use Downtime Cost Calculator.

This calculator let’s you quickly and simply input a few key figures such as annual gross revenue, number of employees, system downtime, labor hours, equipment cost, and more to discover exactly how much SaaS data loss could cost you.

CALCULATOR – ROI

The reality is that a small investment in a cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution now could save you thousands of dollars in the future.

Use our ROI downtime calculator and send the result to your CFO, CIO, clearly demonstrate why backing up your cloud services will save your company money, and keep your business continuity in check.

Data Backup Solutions – Preventing Data Loss Effectively

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Data Backup Solutions – Preventing Data Loss Effectively

IT security has always remained a key concern for every business and with the recent spike in the rise of advanced security breaches like OPM and Target; it has not only become a priority but a crucial component of our IT strategy, and data backup solutions in particular.

External threat can come in many forms such as viruses, worms, phishing attacks, hacking, spam, and can be a well-planned, targeted attack on your organization as well, such as the famous Sony hack.

According to a survey conducted by B2B International and Kaspersky, 91% of the respondents experienced a cyber-attack at least once every year.

However, it isn’t just external threats that can damage your business. Insider threats are an even bigger risk.

According to a recent report by Vormetric, which is based on a survey conducted by Harris Poll, around 93% of respondent U.S IT leaders admitted that their organizations are vulnerable to insider threats.

Another survey by Market Connection, in partnership with SolarWinds found that 57% of respondents believe careless or accidental insiders are more damaging than malicious insiders, while 64% said malicious insider threats are more damaging than malicious external threats.

Source: Kaspersky

The figures are alarming and if you are not serious about your data security and don’t plan, then you should be ready to lose your crucial data anytime.

Nevertheless, the crucial question you should ask is how can you avoid data loss and an inevitable solution to this is a backup solution. If you backup your data in advance, to a safe and secure place, then even during the event of either external or internal attacks, your data will remain safe.

So, let’s see the different ways you can backup your data.

Data Backup Solutions

Tape-Based Backup

Tape-based backup has been in use since 1960 and is an age-old backup method. A large number of well-established and older businesses find it easier and prefer to carry on with this backup solution as it is time-tested, and most importantly, because it doesn’t require any infrastructure upgrade which could prove to be a headache for any business.

Most enterprises use it as a secondary backup though. They use another system as their primary backup solution and use physical tape to create a redundant, additional backup of their data off-site to keep their data safe even during natural disasters.

However, the biggest disadvantage of tape-based backup is that it has become quite anachronistic and it takes significantly longer to backup data as compared to other systems. Moreover, the tapes are prone to failure and are fragile, leading to unreadable and corrupt data.

Disk-Based Backup

Disk-based backups are nothing but storing your data on disk storage as a backup, and the most common storage media used are hard drives or optical disks. The backup and recovery process is quick, easy, and reliable, only if you take care of the disk and systems the backups are stored on.

Another benefit with this backup is that hard disk prices are a lot lower as compared to before and are constantly falling further with increasing storage space, which makes it even more affordable and better value for money as it allows you to fit more data on fewer devices in cost-effective pricing.

However, because it is highly reliant on hard drives or optical disks, any damage to your disk storage can lead to data loss. Moreover, as most businesses keep these physical disks on-site, any disaster could result in a loss of these backups.

Cloud Backup

With this option, cloud providers host your backups on their servers. You can simply connect to the server via an internet connection to backup your data.

One of the most significant advantages with cloud backup is that you don’t need to invest in infrastructure, maintenance, and IT resources to manage your data as everything is taken care of by the cloud providers. The best part about a cloud backup solution is that it is very scalable..

It is easily accessible from anywhere and is very affordable. Aside from easy management, backup, and recovery, it is also faster to set up. All you need is internet connectivity and you’ll be able to restore your data in a matter of hours.

While everything appears to be good with the cloud, one disadvantage is that you need faster internet connectivity if you want to backup and work on your data simultaneously. Setting up a better network infrastructure is a significant investment, as is a dedicated, fast, internet connection.

Another issue with cloud backup is that since this is a relatively a newer concept, quite a few businesses are having a hard time adopting it and trusting it at the moment.

Cloud-to-Cloud Backup

Cloud-to-Cloud backup is nothing but backing up your cloud data to another safe and secure cloud environment. It is different from cloud backup, as it deals with the data stored in the cloud.

An example is backing up your data stored on Google Drive, which is a cloud-based, data storage and productivity solution. You might store sensitive information on Google Drive, but any security breach caused by internal or external forces can lead to data loss and damage your business significantly.

The Elastica Cloud Threat Labs recently identified a Google Drive phishing campaign where an attacker set up phishing web pages on the platform itself, to steal data. However, if you have a cloud-to-cloud backup solution in place, you won’t need to worry about data loss.

Such a solution can save your data from theft by backing it up to another cloud storage platform. With CloudAlly cloud-to-cloud backup solution we automatically back up our clients’ cloud data, whether it is on Google Apps, Office 365, or Salesforce, to a safe and secure, unlimited Amazon storage account, to ensure integrity even if the primary backup is affected by some security breach or application glitch. Your data remains safe and accessible as it is backed up on another cloud platform.

The best part about this solution is that it is highly scalable and causes zero downtime, while improving productivity.

So, which backup solution do you plan to go for? Are you using one of the aforementioned backup solutions currently? Feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

If you want to learn more about cloud-to-cloud backup, read  office 365 backup or  Google Apps backup.