Organisations today face frequent data protection challenges as the Australian and New Zealand governments pass tighter personal data protection laws and make cyber security strategy recommendations for companies, such as the Essential 8. Even with a sharper focus on cyber and data protection posture, data breach incidents, ransomware, and emerging cyber threats are all on the rise.

In a modern workplace where remote and hybrid working is the new norm, technology teams must prioritise security policies and procedures to steer clear of the heightened threat landscape. Given the value of company and personal data to Australian and New Zealand organisations and the increasing need to comply with state and federal data security regulations, protection of information has only grown in importance.

Storing data and running applications in the cloud removes many pitfalls associated with on-premises data storage and management, yet it presents new challenges for IT admins. These challenges include data loss prevention, storage, redundancy and the recovery of data.

Public and private cloud provides remote and distributed workforces easy access to their business applications and collaboration tools to work with colleagues irrespective of location. Whilst great for business continuity and staff motivation, in the changing data storage landscape, data protection and restoration is often overlooked.

With the proliferation of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications that’s changing how we collaborate and get our job done in the modern workplace, protecting data is a new, unexpected challenge. Data is growing. The more data you own, the more you have to sift through, manage and protect.

The new reality of hybrid work only exacerbates the demand for collaboration. Communicating with a distributed workforce over a shared platform like Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace is now commonplace, but what happens to business continuity if something goes wrong with these platforms? Around 40% of companies admit to not having a 3rd party backup solution, so restoring data like Teams chats and documents is not straightforward.

Almost without exception, third-party service providers (such as Microsoft, Salesforce and Google) make the customer take responsibility for their own data protection, whilst focusing on providing a platform that’s secure and available. This means that most organisations face the potential for data loss without the necessary protections in place.

Not all threats are external. It’s common for data breaches and security threats to come from within.  92% of security incidents are unintentional and not malicious; they’re likely user errors. While a general awareness of phishing links in emails and surreptitious malware is relatively high, security teams still need to be conscious of ‘that one user who clicked’. It’s one of the key reasons why data should be backed up frequently and consistently. The same goes for accidental deletion or overwriting documents – reliable backup and recovery is vital in such scenarios.

Not all vulnerabilities lead to malicious intrusions, but unfortunately many do. And often, they’re for profit. The financial impact of data breaches is rising for companies in Australia, with IBM Security’s Cost of a Data Breach Report outlining how the average cost of a data breach based on 23 Australian firms was AU$3.35 million — a year-on-year increase of 9.8%. Just over half (56%) of the intrusions were caused by malicious attacks, well ahead of system faults and human error. Like the cost of a single data breach, the cost of a malicious attack, on average, is AU$3.74 million for an organisation. The ability to pro-actively detect and address threats before they impact your cloud and on-premises environments is critical.

Ransomware is also popular among bad actors, and ransom demands have shot through the roof. The average cost has increased from US$5,000 in 2018 to US$200,000 in 2021. In 2022, a record ransomware payout raked in US$40 million. However, financial loss is not the only problem. Ransomware impacts technology applications and critical infrastructure. That’s downtime for manufacturing plants, IoT devices, processing facilities; anything connected to your organisations affected network. Layer the reputational damage and it’s easy to understand the material impact attacks can have on the modern organisation.

Data protection is never 100%. However, it’s better to be prepared than to be caught unaware. Since most cloud vendors recommend or require third-party backup solutions to secure and protect your data, you need to a solution that meets the growing need for unlimited backup and restore capabilities, such as AvePoint Cloud Backup.

AvePoint Cloud Backup has recently been named a Leader in The Forrester New Wave™: SaaS Application Data Protection Report in Q4 2021.  AvePoint combines 20 years of global and local experience with deep flexibility in storage and configuration to provide the most compete Cloud Backup solution for Microsoft 365. It’s the only SaaS application data protection vendor to score the highest-possible “differentiated” rating across Google Workspace, Salesforce, and Microsoft 365.

AvePoint goes beyond data restoration and looks at the spectrum of data governance, protection and compliance to support organisations to migrate, manage and protect their most valuable assets across 14 data centres globally.

Take the next step with AvePoint Cloud Backup and join over nine million cloud users who rely on AvePoint to protect their data. The platform is built to optimise SaaS operations and secures collaborative environments so that your critical data is never out of reach.

Watch a 5 minute Demo to see how AvePoint can support your organisations data protection requirements.