BACKUP AS A SERVICE
CONTINUED
accidental deletion, ransomware or a wider incident,” he says. “A managed backup approach allows organisations to automate protection and retention policies, apply them consistently and reduce the operational overhead involved in managing backup infrastructure themselves. “It also makes it easier to create consistent recovery processes across multiple applications, accounts and locations, helping organisations recover faster when disruption occurs.” What customers want But as the cyberthreats to business evolve, so do customers’ requirements for what they want in a BaaS solution. “Having another copy of the data is no longer enough,” says Alex. “Customers need confidence that it can be restored quickly and reliably, with recovery time and recovery point objectives that reflect operational requirements. They are also looking for immutable, air-gapped protection that operates independently of their primary cloud provider. “As AI adoption increases, data integrity, provenance, version history and traceability will become more important selection criteria.” Gary agrees that customers want confidence – to know they’ll be back up and running within a known timeframe. “Immutable, isolated copies, regular tested restores and clear recovery times backed by an SLA,” he adds. “Many follow 3-2-1-1-0 rule: three copies; two media types; one offsite; one offline, air-gapped copy and zero errors on verified restores. “Coverage also matters. There’s a persistent myth that Microsoft 365 data is fully protected by Microsoft. It isn’t, beyond limited retention, and that catches a lot of SMBs out. The same applies to other SaaS platforms such as Google Workspace and Salesforce.” Dan agrees, saying customers want visibility of what is protected, clear
Contributors
Gary McLeish
policies around retention, appropriate security controls and evidence that recovery processes actually work. “Services such as AWS Backup can help provide centralised, policy-driven protection across AWS workloads, but technology is only one part of it,” he adds. “Governance, monitoring and regular recovery testing are equally important.” Stefan Voss, VP of product management at N-able, says the focus has shifted beyond protecting against physical failures. “Attackers now deliberately target backup infrastructure and recovery processes before encrypting production systems,” he says. “Organisations need confidence that their backups will still be usable after an attack, making immutable backups a must for those at risk. “They also want fast, flexible recovery, with defined recovery time objectives and clear recovery point objectives that reflect the importance of each system and workload. Automation is non-negotiable too – reducing human error and verifying backup integrity gives customers confidence that their recovery plan will work when it matters." Moving the conversation on As customer requirements change, so resellers and MSPs need to evolve how they talk about BaaS to customers. “Resellers should move the discussion beyond storage volume and licence
converged.group
Alex Walsh
keepit.com
Stew Parkin
assured-dp.com
44
Powered by FlippingBook