Do I need to backup my Office 365 or Google G Suite Environments?
This may be surprising, but the short answer is "Yes". While O365 and G Suite offer robust cloud-based services, they do not provide a complete backup.
Reasons to backup these environments include:
- Data Loss Prevention: Accidental deletion, ransomware attacks, or human error can lead to irretrievable data lost. 1 in 3 companies report losing data stored in their SaaS applications.
- Compliance Requirements: Many industries have strict data retention & backup policies.
- Granular Recovery: Cloud providers often offer limited restore options.
- Time to Recover: Depending upon the amount of data lost, it can take days, weeks, or even months to recover this data. For example, it can take upwards of 1 week or more to recover 3 TB of data 10 TB can take more than 4 weeks.
- Best Practice Recommendations: Microsoft and Google both recommend backing up their environments.
How does ransomware encrypt Google Drive & O365 Environments?
Data stored in the cloud can easily be encrypted by ransomware via file synchronization. With file synchronization, files at are modified or created locally are synchronized to cloud storage. File changes trigger the synchronization process. When the ransomware encrypts local files stored on your computer, these encrypted files are then synchronized into your cloud storage.