Over the last few years, more and more financial services organizations have adopted public cloud services for a unique competitive advantage. That’s why MarketsandMarkets predicts that the financial cloud market will grow at a CAGR of 24.4% to reach $29.47 billion by 2021.

“In the past, banks and financial institutions showed hesitation in adopting cloud-based offerings, citing potential security concerns and risks associated with migrating from on-premises systems,” Martin Häring, the chief marketing officer at Finastra told InformationAge. “Today, it’s more common for financial institutions to embrace cloud-based applications, as they realize the benefits they can deliver in terms of cost reduction and efficiency.”

Public Cloud Services and Data Protection Regulations

The public cloud offers many incredible benefits for financial institutions. It can deliver innovation, customization, and security on a greater scale. It offers agility, increased efficiency, new investment opportunities, and reduced operational costs—all huge benefits. PWC estimates that the public cloud will become the dominant infrastructure model in FinTech by 2020.

Public cloud services offer financial institutions:

• The ability to scale at a moment’s notice. It can be difficult for financial institutions to change—they are big and bulky. However, the cloud helps banks meet demand quickly and scale their services in order to fix the problem.
• A way to cut costs. When the World Bank switched over to Microsoft Office 365, they were able to cut the annual costs of running their email from $12 million to $6 million, while also offering their employees the ability to work remotely.
• The ability to keep up with the evolving technological landscape in a way that improves customer responsiveness and enhances employee workloads.

Popular Public Cloud for Banks

There’s a reason why over half of banks and their consultants are already using public cloud services, and 64% of banks plan to migrate to a public cloud in the next two years. Some of the most popular public cloud services that banks use include:

• Office 365: Office 365 helps financial institutions do everything from improving customer responsiveness to increasing business agility. For example, World Bank migrated to Office 365 along with Singapore-based DBS and Bank of America.
• Google Suite: Google Suite is also a popular public cloud service used by ATB Financial, BBVA banks, and Bci (Chile’s largest bank). It’s used to increase employee productivity, drive innovation, and strengthen customer connections.

Data Protection Regulations and Risks

Unfortunately, banks and other financial institutions face many regulations and security protocols that other industries never have to consider when it comes to bank data protection. There are very high standards for data protection, data privacy, business continuity, and disaster recovery.

So, while moving to the cloud is essential for the financial services industry in 2019, it’s also fraught with risks and challenges. 22 percent of banks worry about data security and 29% of banks see regulation as a barrier to cloud adoption, according to a recent Temenos banking survey.

Data Breaches in Banks

And there are many reasons to be concerned about your data security and protection in the cloud.

• In 2008, Heartland Payment Systems was hacked revealing the credit cards of more than 130 million customers.
• In 2009, CheckFree Corp was hit by cybercriminals, affecting 5 million customers who had their credentials stolen.
• In 2014, Korea Credit Bureau had an employee who secretly copied data of more than 20 million victims including credit card numbers, identification numbers, and addresses.
• In 2014, JPMorgan Chase reported a data breach that affected 76 million households and 7 million small businesses.
• In 2017, Equifax reported that a data breach compromised 400,000 British accounts and 143 million U.S. accounts.

How Do Banks Back Up Their Data?

So, if financial institutions are using public cloud services, how do banks back up their data and protect it from hackers and more? Good question. The answer is, “Not easily.”

In a post-Dodd-Frank Act financial world, banks are required to maintain all records for five years. FFIEC standards also demand that they focus on five specific data areas:

1. Risk management and oversight
2. Threat intelligence and collaboration
3. Cybersecurity controls
4. External dependency management
5. Cyber incident management resilience

With data a priority, there’s a need to have a powerful backup system in place that offers comprehensive security as well as a way to restore data quickly in the case of a breach. There’s also a significant need for service continuity in the cases of mishaps on the cloud.

CloudAlly for the Financial Services Industry

The key is that financial institutions can’t focus on just meeting regulatory cybersecurity standards and data requirements; they should focus on beating them. That means that the financial services industry must take extra measures to protect and utilize their data in the cloud. To do that, your organization should implement a data backup solution that gives you extra security, data accessibility, and restoration capabilities.

A service such as CloudAlly offers additional protection for commonly used cloud computing services such as Office 365 and Google Suite, allowing you to store all your data—including millions of transactions—for as long as you need (not just five years, but indefinitely). You also gain reliable backups, Amazon S3 secure storage, and ISO 27001 certification for information security management.

Learn more about how CloudAlly can work for your financial institution today.

The post Cloud Computing in the Financial Services Industry appeared first on CloudAlly.

Why is Dropbox business backup necessary?

Restore Dropbox files

Dropbox is a popular business storage medium because businesses use it to share files with third parties. It’s often an excellent tool for teams that need to collaborate on a remote basis. Dropbox offers certain kinds of streamlined interface design and compatibility that allow for free file sharing and transparency in complicated business workflows. For example, multiple users can create a folder for collaborative files abnd easily move a document through an edit process.

However, Dropbox as a storage medium should not be confused with a secure place to keep key business data over the long term. Without the ability to restore Dropbox files with a Dropbox backup & restore system, businesses could be putting many of their data assets at risk.

Dropbox advertises its file retention policy as according to various factors.

In any case, it makes abundant sense to have a third-party backup system in order to keep that information recoverable to the company for much longer than 30 days. For instance, if files are deleted when an employee exits the company or during a transition time,CIOs and IT managers may not realize the value of that data until they need a restore to work.

Cloudally Dropbox data cloud to cloud backup system takes all of the Dropbox files in the interface and puts them in a secure Dropbox backup folder as part of an Amazon S3 storage environment. It’s perfect for restoring files that have been deleted:

• Because of employee turnover
• In process changeovers
• By a disgruntled employee or other malicious insider
• Through hacking or unauthorized access
• Through simple mistakes in choosing which data assets to save at the user level

A safe and secure third party Dropbox backup & restore system can also help with privacy and security issues and in some cases, with industry compliance. Take a look at what Cloudally can offer for secure storage in these types of scenarios:

Internal Conflict or Employee Transition –

Employee turnover can be abundantly confusing for a business. Often, there is no point person explicitly in charge to make sure that data assets connected to one employee don’t get erased as the job role changes hands.

In addition, there sometimes conflict that drives employees to work against the business interests. Even in a best case scenario, the employees themselves may not be extremely conscientious about keeping key data in place. If they’re disgruntled, they can do tremendous damage by willfully erasing files.

Simply put, a slip of the finger can cause enormously devastating consequences. Without a Dropbox cloud to cloud backup folder system, companies are putting themselves in real peril when it comes to protecting data assets. Say you have a CTO or supervisor or even a frontline worker walk off the job – and go home and start messing with their smartphone. With the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, we took company data from the shelled system of the in-office intranet to employee endpoint devices, and that’s part of what’s making companies so jumpy about data security. That’s also why it’s a good idea to have a comprehensive backup for all of those many situations that you just can’t predict in terms of employee turnover and personal relationships within a corporate culture.

Getting Basic Information –

When a business faces tricky product or consumer research or legal challenges, discovery helps to build the insights and prove the facts that will help the company to survive and thrive. But if stakeholders such as attorneys or internal research teams can’t find that information, they can’t help the company.

One of the most important reasons to use a system that helps to restore Dropbox files is for the purposes of discovery. With this Dropbox backup & restore system in place, you know that the company will have the means to restore data if the need arises sometime down the road.

Many expert attorneys would suggest having a long-term Dropbox cloud backup folder system in place for this particular reason. Attorneys and other similar professionals and everyone else understands that data is a valuable asset. Companies are now starting to understand this more, too – and they are upgrading their data security practices as a result. Backup planning and other forms of data backups have become incredibly popular these days as businesses try to adjust themselves to the current realities around how we use technology in the workplace.

Hacking and other Emergencies –

Storage has become one of the primary means of doing business in the twenty first century.

Get comprehensive Dropbox backup from Cloudally and protect all of your data – so that when errors, attacks or circumstance threaten, you have the information that you need intact.

The post 5 Reasons Why CIO’s Need To Backup Dropbox Business appeared first on CloudAlly.

View Our Dropbox Restore – Video Demo

Dropbox Business is a cloud storage solution which provides the business with access to your files anywhere, on any device, and provides excellent sharing and storing business assets. Many businesses find this file storage & sharing solution of great value, and take extra precautions in backing it up on cloud, in order to secure their data against breaches, accidental deletions, malicious deletions, etc.  As a communication and collaboration solution in the business activities, this solution provides greater value when there is a backup & restore in place.  So, how do we restore lost data on Dropbox?

Dropbox Business data can be accidentally or maliciously deleted or corrupted, and is vulnerable to ransom-ware attacks.

If it so happens that your business has lost data, and recovery is necessary, CloudAlly application is necessary in order to restore your data, after backup takes place.

About Our Dropbox Restore – Demo Video

In our newest demo video, we show you how easy it is to restore your data in Dropbox Business for your company’s employee’s.  Once you’ve activating your CloudAlly backup is simple, safe, and can be completed in just a few easy-to-follow steps. You’ll notice how user-friendly our software is as well as how many options you have for customizing your backup & restore solution.

Let our two-minute video, take you through the step-by-step process of restoring your Dropbox Business cloud storage solution, so you can sit back and relax knowing that your data is safe and that you can restore like an expert.

To backup Dropbox Business solution, don’t forget, we have a risk Free 15-day trial available! We want to show you how easy it is to protect your data, and restore it when needed, from any point in time without any problem.

When you’re ready to know more, contact CloudAlly by calling +1.917.338.0385 or filling out our Contact Form.
We can’t wait to work with you to keep your Dropbox Business data safe and sound.

View the Dropbox Business video demo to see how easy to use, secure and reliable CloudAlly’s Dropbox Business.

The post How to restore lost data in Dropbox? appeared first on CloudAlly.

Office 365 Backup – Why Isn’t it Already Included?

Does office 365 backup your data?

It’s no secret that IT managers, CIOs, and business owners are moving in droves to the cloud over the past year, and organizations such as Microsoft, Google, Salesforce are seeing a significant upward trend in the volume of businesses, migrating from on-premises Exchange environments to Office 365 online, G Suite, etc. So, is your data backed up by office 365? This is what we intend to find out in this blog post.

What this article is about:

• Why should IT managers move to the cloud?
• Why do IT managers need to backup their Office 365 data?
• Why is there a scenario in which a restore is needed?
• What about the cost of backup?
• Recovery procedure in Microsoft Office 365

Why should IT managers move to the cloud?

IT managers who used to manage a ‘server closet’ have now freed that space, and instead of upgrading, maintaining, supporting technical problems with hardware, they now can focus their energy on supporting the business needs of the employee. This move from on-premise to cloud makes absolute sense. When it comes to emails, files, storage, messaging, there’s hardly any difference (in terms of business value and competitiveness) if you manage them in-house yourself or consume the business solutions as a service.

This is all true except for one particular part of On-premise Vs Cloud; the difference is in: Backup & Restore, in particular Office 365 backup, G Suite Backup, and such.

So what is the classic definition of a backup: Backup: Copies all data and data files that have changed since the last full backup.

However, to achieve true DR (disaster recovery) the backup data center needs to be separate from the original data source, and the copy of the file, email, etc needs to be stored so that if the original system or service is unavailable, it can replace it.

Some IT managers still use a standard on-premises enterprise estate, with MS Exchange. Some have tape, or disk backup as a solution, keeping data anywhere from 1-6 years. There are those CIOs who choose not to delete any information, and keep it on LTO2 tape drive, and old company servers in-office. Not moving to cloud does have its disadvantages, as all this information can be placed at risk in case of fire, theft, and damage. Some countries have regulatory needs in terms of Data Centers, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to secure historical servers against data breaches.

Why do IT managers need to backup their Office 365 data?

Let’s be clear, backup is not free. So why allocate budget expenditure to backing up these business solutions? The simple answer to this question is that we need to be able to restore from any point in time, with an unlimited retention period. It’s all about being able to restore! CIOs need to be able to restore a whole business solution, or individual emails. This is critical to business continuity, and growth.

Why is there a scenario in which a restore is needed?

An IT admin might be required to restore data because a user, an employee has left the company and deleted his/hers emails, Salesforce leads/contacts, data files, and other information necessary for the new employee on-boarding the company in that specific job role.

In other actual situations, an employee might have deleted this data intentionally, or even accidentally, maliciously… in which case the burden of restore falls on the IT department.

Other more problematic situations are when the IT department faces a malicious malware virus, and ransomware is used by an external hacker. This is where cloud backup comes into play, as the IT admin restores the data back to a point in time, before the hack took place. Such Ransomware attacks are likely to compromise the company SharePoint/OneDrive data, and Microsoft restore capabilities do not address this need.

It’s necessary to recall that Microsoft deleted data retention periods are very short – about 90 days – and incomplete… because instances such as Azure server outages have occurred in the past, which again halt business activity. If cloud to cloud backup is in place, the IT admin is able to restore from Amazon AWS data center using applications such as CloudAlly, but only if the company CIO understood the value of backup and activated it on www.CloudAlly.com

What about the cost of backup?

If we examine Microsoft Office 365, E3… per user/month, it costs about $25-30? This cost contains a backup for 90 odd days, so once you’ve deleted your items from both your inbox and the Deleted Items folder, what happens next when you need to restore?

However, if we look at backing up Office 365 Exchange; with a backup scope of Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks. And, this includes the following backup features: backup all or selected users, backup Office 365 Exchanges, and also automatically detect new users. What does this all cost to the organization? The backup cost is $30 per user/year.

The cost for backup is further reduced in companies with over 100 employees, and or for those CIOs who use a bundle backup for multiple services. The opportunity cost of not backing up is sheer folly .. risking business assets, which can be made secure and safe.

Recovery procedure in Microsoft Office 365

Use the recoverable Items folder which holds items up to 30 days (14 days is the default state). Items which remain in the folder longer than 30 days are lost, forever … without any way to recover them. (But, it’s possible to purge your own Recoverable Items folder at any time.)

There are IT managers which are adamant that Microsoft has thought about all this, and provides cloud backup, after they have migrated to cloud. This is partly true in fact, Microsoft’s reply to this situation is a Litigation Hold. This feature copies all the e-mails into an immutable area (hidden from users in Recoverable Items). Also, there is also an In-Place Hold option; but gradually Microsoft is phasing it out. Some IT managers have already been informed of this.

If In-Place Hold wasn’t phased out, the IT managers options weren’t so limited, Litigation Hold doesn’t support public folders, like In-Place Hold. So, eventually if its needed to backup public folders, there is no other way but to adopt a 3rd party solution like CloudAlly.com

*Microsoft Website Note on Litigation Hold and In-Place Hold:
06/24/2019

We’ve postponed the July 1, 2017 deadline for creating new In-Place Holds in Exchange Online (in Office 365 and Exchange Online standalone plans). But later this year or early next year, you won’t be able to create new In-Place Holds in Exchange Online. As an alternative to using In-Place Holds, you can use eDiscovery cases or Office 365 retention policies in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center. After we decommission new In-Place Holds, you’ll still be able to modify existing In-Place Holds, and creating new In-Place Holds in an Exchange hybrid deployment will still be supported. And, you’ll still be able to place mailboxes on Litigation Hold.

In any case using litigation hold as a backup creates more legal risk by exposing all company data to eDiscovery rather than only those items that really require litigation hold.

Knowledgeable IT admins, as a process of securing the data, require a separation of roles, so that O365 administrators could assign themselves eDiscovery Manager rights, and gain full access to search and export from Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint folders, and OneDrive folders. And, also change the Litigation Hold policies.

This is exactly why 3rd party cloud backup solutions become useful when integrated with O365. The CloudAlly solution includes role-based access control, which assists organizations to comply with the regional data protection laws, while also allowing a different admin to control the rights to restore.

To conclude; the proficient Chief Information Officer, knows that an independent online 3rd party backup, is the correct policy in organizations using cloud solutions. Some of them started to backup their Office 365 with a Free 14 day trial.

Now that you know about that Office 365 doesn’t fully backup your data, you might want to have a look at what we created for you…

The post Does office 365 backup your data? appeared first on CloudAlly.

CloudAlly Identified as a Value Provider for Business Continuity

CloudAlly identified as one of the key players (as a cloud backup & restore vendor,) across the value chain of the global business continuity management planning solution market.

NBC2 News Today – has recently reported on a survey done by Persistence Market Research on the topic of: Business Continuity Management Planning Solution Market is Expected to Grow ~ US$ 1.6 Bn by the end of 2029 – PMR.

CEO’s today realize cloud to cloud backup to be an integral part of business continuity.

Business continuity in incidents requiring disaster recovery, have become more common in recent times due to an influx of Malware and Ransomware occurrences, data center outages, and such.  Cloud to cloud backup solutions like CloudAlly provide a 3rd party, Amazon AWS backup of major business solutions such as Office 365, SharePoint/OneDrive, G Suite, and such.  Businesses in need of email exchange recovery, or CRM data restore, utilize the 3rd party backup by CloudAlly to ensure business continuity, with zero business operation disturbance.

 PMR – Persistence Market Research is a US based third-platform research firm. Its research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.

Read more about the market report.

The post Business Continuity Management Planning Solution Market appeared first on CloudAlly .

…with increasingly common cloud outages?

Why cloud to cloud backup is needed for business continuity in the face of  recent series of outages?

On January 24, 2019, European Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online users discovered that they couldn’t access their emails. It turned out that some of Microsoft’s data center infrastructure had failed, leaving these cloud users out of luck.

While one Microsoft cloud outage might not have been a problem, less than a week later, users faced problems with their cloud Office 365 and Azure and Dynamics services. The outage was blamed on a CenturyLink software defect.

These outages from major players in the cloud industry has IT pros nervous, and for a good reason indeed. Is the cloud really the full-scale solution we’ve been promised? Certainly, in order to adopt cloud services without worrying about down-time, it’s important to use a third-party service that helps you recover lost data and continue operations during outages.

What this article is about:

• Outages from Big-Name Cloud Providers
• Is the Cloud Actually Trustworthy?
• Using a Third-Party Backup for Recovery

Outages from Big-Name Cloud Providers 

This year, many of the best-known cloud providers have had one or more outages. Some of these well-known cloud providers have included widely-used business services, like Google Cloud, Apple Play, and iCloud.

On March 12, 2019, for example, Gmail and Google Drive were down for over three hours. Microsoft Azure, which includes features like Microsoft 365, Active Directory and database services, and storage, was down for almost three hours on May 2.

While many of the cloud outages this year have been relatively short, this time offline adds up in productivity and money. Further, different cloud providers have differing outage length, so your business could be more or less affected based on the service you use. From January 2018 through May 2019, Amazon Web Services (AWS) only had 338 hours of downtime, with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) reporting 361 hours. Microsoft Azure, in turn, reported 1,934 hours of downtime.

Complicating this outage reporting time, too, is the fact that there is no standardized measure for reporting cloud outages. Each company must self-report its outage times and frequencies. This means, then, that Azure and GCP often don’t report the regional impact of cloud outages. For example, some services would report only one hour of downtime, even if that downtime affected three distinct service regions.

With good reason, these regular outages have worried IT professionals about how reliable cloud services are for their businesses. After all, how would operations come to a halt if Office 365 Exchange came to a halt in the middle of the workday?

Is the Cloud Actually Trustworthy? 

Cloud platforms are growing at an exponential rate. In 2019, Gartner predicts that cloud services will increase by a remarkable 17.5 percent in just one year. Though cloud providers know about the issues that will inevitably face their data centers and services, an increasing demand for cloud services means that problems will certainly continue to arise.

For example, as cloud services increase quickly to meet demand, older on-premises infrastructure that probably should have been aged out will be forced to work another day.

Still, while most of the outages thus far have often been short, a loss estimate has been predicted for a longer outage that lasts for three to six days. Because so many businesses rely on a limited number of providers, the estimators suggest, an outage that lasts for multiple days could lose companies a total of $15bn. Small businesses would be particularly at risk for loss because many of them don’t have cyber-insurance.

Using a Third-Party Backup for Recovery 

There are undeniably benefits to using cloud services, and as we see a significant industry change, companies that don’t switch over will likely be left behind. At the same time, though, cloud outages will likely continue to be a problem as the industry expands.

The only solution, then, is to be prepared for cloud outages, or even data loss, before it happens. Using a third-party cloud to cloud backup like CloudAlly for Office 365, G Suite, SharePoint, OneDrive, and DropBox ensures that you’ll be able to recover necessary files during a cloud outage.

Say for example that you’d experienced the Office 365 email outage described above. With CloudAlly, your users would have had their email contacts and mailboxes saved the day before with CloudAlly’s automatic daily backup. With CloudAlly restore, they could have retrieved the information they needed to continue daily functions until the outage was restored. Once that happened, then users could access both their older and newer files, accessible through CloudAlly’s non-destructive data restore.

Interested to know more about why it’s necessary to protect your online data? Read our eBook Why Backup Online Data? to learn more.

The post How cloud to cloud backup solutions, help avoid business continuity disruption? appeared first on CloudAlly.

SaaS Backup

An increasing number of organizations are moving to SaaS platforms like Office 365, G Suite and Salesforce. It is a misconception however to assume that your data on the cloud is secure. Understand the risks of data loss on the cloud and use SaaS backup solutions to protect it. 

This article contains:

• SaaS data loss is a reality
• Main reasons for SaaS data loss
• How do you secure your SaaS data?

SaaS data loss is a reality

You’ve moved your data to a SaaS platform, and are hugely benefiting from its flexibility, scalability, and fantastic collaboration mechanisms. However, did you know that while SaaS solutions like Office 365, G Suite, Box, and Salesforce, have best-in-class security precautions, they cannot protect your data from data breaches or data loss at your end or from platform outages? Which is why it is no surprise that SaaS industry news is replete with increasingly frequent occurrences of outages and security breaches. 

At the root of it is a mistaken (but gradually changing) perception within the IT workforce that using cloud / SaaS solutions means that there is no need for data in the cloud to be backed up.

Main reasons for SaaS data loss

According to Ponemon Institute’s Cost of a Data Breach 2019 report, the global average cost of a data breach is $3.92 million. Your data on the cloud is vulnerable to loss and breaches due to these reasons:

Human error: An account mistakenly deleted, a critical email erased or an org-wide shared document overwritten? Nightmarish scenarios that cannot be fixed without a backup and recovery solution.

Malicious intent: Your SaaS data is also prone to intentional overwrites, and deletes by bad actors like disgruntled or malicious employees.

Synchronization errors: Syncing or updating multiple SaaS applications, which is a common software scenario in organizations, is not always seamless and can cause loss of SaaS data.

Hackers, Malware, Ransomware, Cryptomining, Phishing: There is an ever-growing list of malware types and scams. The damages due to such data breaches are devastating not only in terms of financial loss, but also damage the business’ reputation and cause loss of customers. 

Your SaaS platforms cannot protect you from all these causes. Additionally, many regulatory laws such as GDPR, HiPAA, SOX, etc. mandate that protecting SaaS data is a “shared responsibility”, and an organization needs to have accurate recovery capabilities in the event of data loss.

How do you secure your SaaS data?

Ironically, the cloud itself is the answer to protect your SaaS data. Cloud-to-cloud backup harnesses the many advantages of the cloud to provide reliable backup and quick recovery. 

CloudAlly provides SaaS backup solutions for the entire range of SaaS platforms – Office365, G Suite, Salesforce, Sharepoint and OneDrive, Dropbox, Box and more. We were also ranked #1 under best business tool category by Newsweek by over 10,000 IT Pros. We offer a full-featured 15-day free trial which you can activate and start backing up your data in minutes and are very highly rated and recommended by our users.

Contact us to have an expert guide you as you navigate the waters of data protection to achieve a reliable and secure enterprise.

The post Why Do You Need SaaS Backup for Your Data in the Cloud? appeared first on CloudAlly.

Office 365 Data Loss

It is a myth that Microsoft will protect you from data loss in Office 365. Microsoft is incrementally ensuring a reliable service, but the data within your Office 365 tenant is your responsibility. However, it cannot protect you from Office 365 data loss at your end – due to malware, human error or malicious intent.

This article contains:

• Onus of protecting Office 365 data
• Ways data loss occurs in Office 365
• Office 365 outages
• Office 365 archives
• How do you safeguard against Office 365 data loss

YOU have the onus of protecting Office 365 data

As per Compliance Laws

As per governance laws like the GDPR, HiPAA, SOX, and many others, protecting your customer’s data is a responsibility that is shared between the controller (your organization) and the processor (third-party service providers like SaaS platforms). Moreover, in the event of a data breach or data loss, “shared accountability” and “joint liability” is mandated.

Need another reason? Compliance laws also insist on the organization having “the ability to restore the availability and access to personal data in a timely manner in the event of a physical or technical incident”. What that means, is that they mandate that you have a solution or capability to accurately backup and restore data.

As per your Cloud Service Provider

Microsoft provides a highly reliable service with Office 365, but they themselves recommend backup in their service agreement, “We strive to keep the Services up and running; however, all online services suffer occasional disruptions and outages, and Microsoft is not liable for any disruption or loss you may suffer as a result. In the event of an outage, you may not be able to retrieve Your Content or Data that you’ve stored. We recommend that you regularly backup Your Content and Data that you store on the Services or store using Third-Party Apps and Services” 

Do not be mistaken – your data in Office 365 is your responsibility!

Ways data loss occurs in Office 365

Human Error: Office 365  has not yet reached the maturity where it can decipher intent when all the rules of the service are followed. We are talking about accidental deletions of data by parties with no ill-intent – plain human error. According to Aberdeen Group, research shows that 70% of all data loss is accidental.

Malware: Then there are malicious actors such as hackers, ransomware, and malware that can cause massive data loss. While there is so much you can do to fully prevent these attacks, these do happen and you need countermeasures.

And don’t forget about the disgruntled employee causing data loss by malicious intent!

Office 365 outages do happen

Service in the cloud means 99.9% uptime. In the first few months of 2019 alone, Office 365 has suffered two major outages. The second outage dated 28th January 2019 was a massive two-day outage. 

Another Microsoft outage caused data loss where Microsoft deleted several Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) databases in Azure, holding live customer information. 

We are talking no email access, no customer emails, no spreadsheets, no presentations – Basically bringing your enterprise to a halt. Can you quantify the financial loss in having your data unavailable or lost for that long? 

What about native Office 365 archives

Office 365 offers short preset retention periods for deleted emails and deleted items in OneDrive. However, they hold data only for a limited period of time, do not backup regularly (your data will be outdated), and restoring data from may be cumbersome. Such options are more of an archival mechanism than a true backup and restore solution.

So how do you safeguard against Office 365 data loss?

So now that you know that your data in Office 365 needs dependable protection against data loss, what should you do? Select a 

Cloudally provides a safe (ISO 27001 certified, GDPR, and HIPAA compliant), secure (Amazon S3 Secure Storage and AES-256 Encryption) and flexible cloud backup solutions for Office365, Sharepoint and OneDrive, We were also ranked #1 under best business tool category by Newsweek by over 10,000 IT Pros. We offer a full-featured 15-day free trial which you can activate and start backing up your data in minutes and are very highly rated and recommended by our users.

Contact us to have an expert guide you as you navigate the waters of data protection to achieve a reliable and secure enterprise.

The post How Can You Safeguard Against Data Loss in Office 365? appeared first on CloudAlly.

By Slava Gorelik – Founder and VP R&D

Malware threats to data

Hackers are getting more ingenious by the day with fileless invisible malware types that escape detection. Nodersok is the latest in the line, but it is only one amongst many. Top 10 malware infections in 2019 included Emotet, Wannacry, ZeuS, Dridex, and Kovter. How can an organization secure itself against such: malware threats to data?

What is Nodersok?

In September 2019,  researchers from Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) team discovered a fileless multi-stage infection, node.js based malware. They dubbed it Nodersok. Fileless threats pose a different level of challenge compared to file-based ones and need advanced techniques to manage prevention. Nodersok uses valid tools and ensures nothing malicious is written to the disk. The malice resides in-memory. The entire Nodersok campaign runs in four stages, finally disabling the Windows Defender Antivirus and turning the machine into a proxy. Nodersok has affected a range of industry sectors with a particular fondness for the education sector.

How prevalent are malware attacks?

Different though they are, these forms of malware show certain common aspects:

• Microsoft Office is a favorite
• Email is the primary attack vector
• Over 60% of the attacks target the small business category. 

How do you protect your organization and data from them?

Malware protection in Office 365

If your enterprise has moved to Office 365, you have taken a step in the right direction. Office 365 comes with built-in protection that prevents the introduction of malware into Office 365 via a client or from an Office 365 server.  Exchange online ensures that all emails travel through the Exchange Online Protector (EOP) which scans and quarantines in real-time.

Microsoft also offers Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with an email filtering service that provides additional protection against phishing. Similar protection exists for Sharepoint Online and OneDrive for Business as well.  With all the defense in place, malware threats to data still do materialize and while there is no consistent globally agreed way to track and report a cost per infection, in 2018, in the US alone the average cost per breach was $7.9 million.

Data loss from threats like malware are an established reality and enterprises both big and small cannot afford to take the risk. For malware to infest your organization, all it takes is one wrong click, one crafty phishing attack, one infected flash drive. Office 365 cannot protect you from data loss/corruption due to such attacks at your end. This is why third-party SaaS backup is so critical to protecting your organization’s data.

How can SaaS backup protect against Malware threats to data?

The damages of malware threats to an organization include data corruption, data loss, identity theft, and security/network breaches. The repercussions of such an attack go far beyond financial loss; they can decimate a company’s reputation and customer base, which has taken years to build, in a few hours. When struck with a malware attack, the best way to minimize its damage is to ensure business continuity with quick disaster recovery.

Central to that is having a reliable backup and recovery solution. SaaS backup of Office 365 can enable you to easily and quickly recover an accurate copy of your data and can completely blunt the malware attack. Office 365 does come with native solutions like Recycle Bin, however, they offer limited-timespan restores and recovery can be cumbersome. 

How can CloudAlly help?

CloudAlly pioneered cloud backup way back in 2011. Resultantly we have nurtured a mature suite of robust SaaS backup solutions for Office 365 Backup, Sharepoint and OneDrive.  We were also ranked #1 by Newsweek by over 10,000 IT Pros.

We offer a full-featured 15-day free trial which you can activate and start backing up your data in minutes and are very highly rated and recommended by our users. We also offer considerable discounts for educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and as a part of our partner program. Contact us and we will be happy to have an expert guide you.

The post Nodersok: How Can You Protect Your Enterprise From Malware Threats? appeared first on CloudAlly.

Recover Deleted OneDrive Files

OneDrive for Business is at the heart of Office 365. It is one of the most popular file-sharing apps, providing organizations with a secure SaaS collaboration platform to store, share, and work on various document types. With so much business-critical information on OneDrive, an accidental/malicious deletion or corruption would be disastrous, to put it mildly. So here’s a step-by-step process to: recover deleted OneDrive files, along with best practices to protect your valuable OneDrive data.

This article includes:

• Steps to recover a deleted OneDrive file
• Limitations of OneDrive’s native restore options
• Best practices for OneDrive data protection

Steps to recover deleted OneDrive files

Option 1: Recover deleted OneDrive files from Recycle Bin within 30 days

If a user deletes a file, it is stored for 30 days in the OneDrive for Business Recycle Bin. While still in this Recycle Bin, simply go into the bin and restore the file. 

Option 2: Recover deleted OneDrive files from Second-Stage Recycle Bin after 30 days

After 30 days, or if the user empties the recycle bin, files are stored for an additional 30 days in the “Second-Stage Recycle Bin.” From the Recycle Bin click on the “Second-Stage Recycle Bin.” Then click on the file, files, or folder you want to be restored.

Option 3: Recover deleted OneDrive files after 60 days via OneDrive Restore

Microsoft rolled out its OneDrive restore capability in 2018. Using it you can revert OneDrive data to a specific date and time in the last 30 days before that file was compromised. 

• In OneDrive, under Settings, select Restore OneDrive
• Select the point-in-time for OneDrive Restore
• OneDrive will bring up a timeline with the changes a user has made within 30 days. Using the slider, pick the data before which the OneDrive files were corrupted or deleted.  All other activities that occurred after that are selected automatically. 
• Deselect the activities that you do not want to be restored. Click Restore to complete the restoration of OneDrive to the chosen date. 

Limitations of OneDrive’s native recovery options

Though the files restore feature seems simple enough to use, there are significant limitations: 

• Recovery is time-bound: 30 days after a file is deleted it goes to the Recycle Bin, 30 days after that it goes to the secondary Recycle Bin, and finally, 30 days post that it can be recovered using the steps OneDrive Restore option. After 93 days, it is permanently deleted. Consider that you are asked to recover an important file or email from three months ago. Unfortunately, you cannot. As Microsoft says, “items  are automatically deleted after 93 days”.
• Erroneous, cumbersome recovery: As recovery is based on batch restores, an error recovering an artifact from the batch will jeopardize the entire batch recovery. If malware has struck and bulk deletions or corruptions have occurred, imagine the added stress of recovering files bit by bit. Moreover, all changes a user has made to the file(s) are completely overwritten.
• Limited Recovery capabilities: With Recycle Bins, no point-in-time recovery is possible and with Restore Your OneDrive, no granular restore is supported. Restoring OneDrive does not recover folder structures or sharing permissions. 
• Poor notifications: Consider that a disgruntled employee deleted a few critical documents – it would escape the native notification system. As per OneDrive Restore, “Notifications are sent to users when a higher than usual number of files are deleted per hour”.

Best practices for OneDrive data protection

Here are some pointers to optimally protect your OneDrive data:

• Ensure that as the admin, you have subscribed for OneDrive mass delete notifications.
• Use OneDrive’s folder protection feature to sync offline folders with those on the cloud.
• Guarantee recovery with third-party cloud backup and recovery. Native OneDrive recovery options have multiple limitations. Limitations that an organization reeling under the consequences of a security breach, malware attack or sync error, can do without. The best way to facilitate speedy disaster recovery and ensure business continuity is with quick and easy data recovery. 

CloudAlly’s OneDrive/SharePoint backup solution comprehensively backs up OneDrive along with SharePoint Online Team Site (and all sub-sites), Public Site (and all sub-sites), and private Site Collections. The backup is reliably stored on Amazon S3 secure storage. Both point-in-time and granular restores are supported with unlimited data retention. Further, when you need to restore a file or folder, CloudAlly performs a non-destructive restore, so any further changes a user made after the loss date won’t be overwritten. 

Blunt the risk of a malware attack, accidental/malicious data loss or a sync error – all of which are increasingly common causes of data loss. Protect your OneDrive data with CloudAlly’s mature (we pioneered SaaS backup in 2011) and top-rated (voted as a top business tool by Newsweek by over 10,000 IT Pros) OneDrive backup and recovery solution.

Get fail-safe OneDrive recovery. Start your free trial now!

The post How Can You Recover Deleted OneDrive Files? appeared first on CloudAlly.