New Research Shows Shift to Remote Work Has Intensified Data Protection Challenges

Global market report reveals struggle to protect the explosion of Office 365 data

• 52% of IT decision makers say their organization has experienced a ransomware attack.
• 67% of organizations are still relying solely on capabilities built in Office 365 to backup and recover Office 365 data.
• 81% of respondents indicate that using Teams creates a data-retention concern.

Barracuda, a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, released key findings from a report titled The state of Office 365 backup. Commissioned by Barracuda, the research surveyed global IT decision makers to capture their opinions and perspectives about Office 365, data security, backup and recovery, SaaS solutions, and a variety of related topics.

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Overall, the findings indicate that the worldwide shift to remote work during the pandemic has intensified the challenges associated with protecting Office 365 data. Highlights from the report include:

• Protecting data against attack and loss—both from outside actors and inside sources—is a key concern.
  • 72% of respondents are concerned that their Office 365 data could be the target of ransomware.
  • 52% say their organization has experienced a ransomware attack.
• Organizations want granular restore and other functionality not available in Microsoft’s native capabilities.
  • 77% of IT decision makers agree that granular restore of Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams is important to them.
  • 79% want to be able to recover mailboxes to another location or user.
• Data protection is both a security and a regulatory concern.
  • 69% of respondents are concerned about data being backed up outside their geography (geo residency).
  • More than 7 in 10 respondents are concerned about compliance with data privacy requirements.
• Organizations prefer a SaaS solution that is fast and easy to get up and running.
  • 74% of the IT decision makers surveyed say that SaaS backup for Office 365—i.e., no hardware or software to maintain—is important to them.
  • Roughly 8 in 10 want to be able to start running their first backups immediately upon signing up for a new data protection solution.

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“With the rapid shift to remote work dramatically increasing reliance on SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams over the past year, protecting Office 365 data is a more crucial requirement than ever before—and more challenging,” said Tim Jefferson, SVP, Engineering for Data, Networks and Application Security, Barracuda. “That’s why organizations are looking for comprehensive, easy-to-use backup solutions that are fast to get up and running and include capabilities like granular retention that aren’t included in Microsoft’s native functionality.”

The survey, conducted by independent market researcher Censuswide, includes responses from 1,828 executives, individual contributors, and team managers with responsibility for their organization’s cloud infrastructure. They came from organizations in companies with 50 or more employees in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC.

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