Data—the lifeblood of modern businesses. When disaster strikes, losing that valuable data can have consequences ranging from lost revenue to impeded productivity, reputational damage and even legal liabilities. That’s where Backup as a Service (BaaS) comes into play.
What is Backup as a Service (BaaS)?
Backup as a Service is a cloud-based solution that allows organizations to back up their critical data to a remote, secure location. Typically, managed service providers (MSPs) like IX Solutions provide fully-managed BaaS that ensures your data is:
- Efficiently deployed into the cloud
- Regularly backed up and encrypted
- Stored in multiple locations for redundancy
- Tested and monitored for backup success, warnings and failures
What’s included in a data backup? It can range from your organization’s critical databases (think files and documents), to the data held within your software tools, to company email and beyond.
What are the benefits of BaaS?
1) Data loss protection
It’s all too common that businesses experience data loss—and while there are steps to mitigate the causes, some factors are simply out of your control. According to Veeam, data loss is most often caused by application and cybersecurity events (tied at 53%), followed by infrastructure or networking failures (52%) and accidental deletion (49%), amongst other contributors. With BaaS, your organization can safeguard its data so that when an incident does occur, it’s possible to get back up and running quicker and more cost effectively.
Source: Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023
2) Improved security posture
Backup solutions are specially designed to encrypt your data, protecting it from unauthorized access, theft or cyberattacks. As a best practice, BaaS providers will store your data in multiple locations to ensure redundancy in case of a disaster.
When incidents do occur, your backup could just be your saving grace. If you experience a ransomware attack and a cybercriminal demands money in exchange for your data, having a backup of that data will eliminate the need to pay up. Overall, effective backups are a critical component of your organization’s security landscape.
Who is most vulnerable to data loss?
Data loss is a risk universal to all businesses—but there are certain sectors that are more susceptible to a higher severity of consequences due to the nature of information they hold and/or industry regulations. These include:
- Financial Services & Banking — Holding vast amounts of valuable personal and financial information, banks and other financial services organizations are often targeted by cyber criminals. According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach in this industry is $5.97 million.
- Healthcare — Similar to financial services, healthcare providers are often targeted by criminals due to the sensitive nature of the information they hold. The same report reveals data breaches in this industry are the most costly of all, averaging $10.10 million in recovery costs.
- Government — In today’s political landscape, government organizations are increasingly being targeted by cyberattacks. In 2019, the City of Baltimore experienced a ransomware attack that “compromised the city’s networks, took its email system offline, and adversely impacted its dispatch system,”—eventually costing over $18 million to recover from [Arctic Wolf].
How can you get started with BaaS?
BaaS is an essential component of your IT infrastructure, ensuring the continuity of your operations in the event of an incident. If you’re ready to offload the maintenance and monitoring of your backups so you can stay focused on critical priorities, check out our Managed Backup as a Service solutions.
