Is Your SaaS Data as Protected as You Think?

Originally published on Its All About Recovery as Is Your SaaS Data as Protected as You Think?

I pride myself in the backup and recovery process I use for my home. I’m also pretty proud to call myself a geek.

I have multiple computers at home with each having different functions, but all have a backup system in place that stores backups on the local machine as well as on a NAS. The NAS is then backed up to two separate off-site storage locations to ensure redundancy.

Additionally, I have another backup/recovery process that I use on my off-site Web server to ensure all of my Web-based data and content is backed up to the cloud.

While this is overkill for most people, it’s necessary to ensure that the data my wife and I use for our businesses is safely stored and ready for recovery in case disaster strikes. For every conceivable scenario that might hit a computer (or computers) my wife and I use, I have a disaster recovery scenario ready to go.

Or so I thought.

Now, for the sake of my pride, I have to say that the disaster occurred in one of my Google Mail accounts. I didn’t have a backup solution that covered my Google Mail account since Google provides a real-time backup of mail data.

The problem arose this past weekend. A large portion of emails had been deleted. They weren’t in the trash folder, nor were they filed away somewhere. They were just gone.

I contacted Google for help in restoring the data. Their response: “Sorry . . . the data is deleted . . . our backup solution doesn’t recover deleted data.”

My data is gone, and there’s nothing that Google can do about it.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time building backup and recovery processes and solutions to protect my data. I went above and beyond what most folks do for their own home and felt I had all my bases covered — and I do, when it comes to the data that I have full control over.

My backup processes fell short when it came to dealing with SaaS-type applications like Google Mail. I was working under an assumption that the SaaS data was being backed up in the manner that I needed it to be.

I’ve got some work to do to ensure my SaaS data is as secure as my “local” data. I’m going to be looking for a solution that ensures my SaaS data is backed up just as securely as all my other data.

Are you using SaaS applications? If so, have you done your homework to make sure your SaaS data is as protected via backup as your local data? Does your current backup and recovery solution provide functionality to back up both your local data and your SaaS data?

Image Credit: Sunset over Dallas

Originally published on Its All About Recovery as Is Your SaaS Data as Protected as You Think?