Clumio has announced that it has added Microsoft 365 to its secure backup as a service, providing organizations running Microsoft 365 with a globally consolidated data protection service. The company, which continues to redefine backup with the first enterprise data protection service in the market to protect private cloud, public cloud and SaaS on a single platform, is now addressing a key market-wide data protection gap for Microsoft 365 users. As data moves to the cloud, risks associated with data loss and ransomware attacks increase and SaaS apps are not immune to that risk. Enterprises that standardize on Microsoft 365 will need a robust backup strategy to protect and ensure the compliance of their email data because the company, as the data owner, is responsible for data protection and backup.
“The addition of Microsoft 365 to our enterprise backup as a service will bolster companies’ data protection strategies regardless of where they are on their cloud journeys,” said Poojan Kumar, CEO and co-founder, Clumio. “Other backup vendors offer DIY or ‘wannabe’ SaaS solutions that leave customers open to ransomware and data loss and require the customer to absorb additional hardware and software infrastructure management tasks and costs. Clumio is arming companies with a single backup as a service solution for secure and compliant data protection – with predictable costs and no infrastructure to manage and unprecedented simplicity.”
Enterprises and their data are vulnerable, now more than ever. Multiple COVID-related email scams have been documented, including some that provide links to fake Microsoft 365 login screens that capture user credentials. By 2021, ransomware will cause $20B worth of damage globally, with a business becoming victim to ransomware every 11 seconds. Research firm IDC reports that in 2018, 69 percent of organizations suffered successful malware attacks within 12 months, 39 percent of which involved ransomware. Companies are constantly at risk of suffering data loss or ransomware attacks, and those running Microsoft 365 need a comprehensive backup strategy. Microsoft’s service protection responsibility is limited to infrastructure levels, including infrastructure availability, security and access controls. Meanwhile, the responsibility for all data protection – including data security, privacy and retention – falls to the user.
“As enterprises continue to make oversight, protection and control of their data a priority, leaders must also solidify their backup strategy for Microsoft 365. Without data protection that also encompasses SaaS, companies are exposing themselves to data loss, security issues and compliance risks. Also, SaaS tools are not exempt from internal threats, such as the accidental deletion of data, or external threats such as ransomware attacks,” said Archana Venkatraman, associate research director, cloud data management, IDC. “Today, data is dispersed across SaaS apps and multiple clouds. Embracing a cloud-native approach to bring data protection to where the data resides is much more effective than trying to bring the data to the infrastructure.”
Companies planning to adopt Microsoft 365 or currently running Microsoft 365 need powerful, comprehensive backup. In fact, Microsoft’s services agreement recommends users back up Microsoft 365 and that users “regularly back up your content and data that you stored on the services or store using third-party apps and services.” If they want to be able to search and recover anything from a single email to a complete inbox, enterprises will need more than the native, default backup offered by Microsoft to address important data protection, compliance and data retention requirements. With Clumio, customers can start protecting their data in 15 minutes, with data retention policies that meet their industry’s requirements.
Clumio offers a unified backup solution that protects public cloud, private cloud and SaaS with a single service for VMware, VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS EBS and Microsoft 365. This single solution provides companies with always-on security, fast, intuitive restores and effortless compliance – and air gap data protection that enables recovery from data loss and ransomware.
“At CSK, we aggressively evaluate and implement new technologies to ensure that we have world-class technology to enable the growth of our firm,” said Jason Thomas, CIO of Florida’s largest law firm, CSK Legal. “I can’t afford to find a new backup solution for each move I make, so it is extremely valuable to be standardized on Clumio backup as a service. Clumio makes it super simple to protect new workloads as they come online and consolidate the protection of existing ones, like Microsoft 365, on the same platform.”
