New Research Shows Australia’s Shift To Remote Work Has Intensified Data Protection Challenges

Sydney, 29 March 2021 - Barracuda, a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, today released key findings from a report titled The state of Office 365 backup. Commissioned by Barracuda, the research surveyed global decision makers, including 201 Australian IT leaders, to capture their opinions and perspectives about Office 365, data security, backup and recovery, SaaS solutions, and a variety of related topics. 

Read the full report: https://www.barracuda.com/office365-ccb   

Overall, the findings indicate that the shift to remote work during the pandemic has intensified the challenges associated with protecting Office 365 data. Highlights from the report include: 

• Protecting data against attack and loss—both from outside actors and inside sources—is a key concern. 
• 72% of respondents globally and 68% of Australian respondents are concerned that their Office 365 data could be the target of ransomware.
• 52% of respondents globally and 46%  of Australian respondents say their organisation has experienced a ransomware attack.

• Organisations want granular restore and other functionality not available in Microsoft’s native capabilities.   
• 77% of IT decision makers globally and 80% of Australian respondents agree that granular restore of Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams is important to them.  
• 79% globally and 84% in Australia want to be able to recover mailboxes to another location or user.

• Data protection is both a security and a regulatory concern. 
• 69% of respondents globally and 67% of respondends in Australia are concerned about data being backed up outside their geography (geo residency).
• More than 7 in 10 respondents globally and 69% of respondents in Australia are concerned about compliance with data privacy requirements.  

• Organisations prefer a SaaS solution that is fast and easy to get up and running. 
• 74% of the IT decision makers surveyed globally and 81 per cent in Australia say that SaaS backup for Office 365—i.e., no hardware or software to maintain—is important to them. 
• Around 8 in 10 globally and in Australia (85%) want to be able to start running their first backups immediately upon signing up for a new data protection solution.

“For many Australian organisations, protecting Office 365 data has become more critical and more challenging over the past year what with the accelerated shift to remote work and the increasing reliance on SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams,”  said Andrew Huntley, ANZ Regional Sales Director, Barracuda. “That’s why organisations are assessing what additional steps they need to take to ensure the staff, the devices they are using, and the resources they accessing are secure at all times.   Key features include easy-to-use backup solutions that are fast to get up and running and have core capabilities like granular retention that aren’t included in Microsoft’s native functionality.”

The survey, conducted by independent market researcher Censuswide, includes responses from 1,828 executives, individual contributors, and team managers with responsibility for their organisation's cloud infrastructure. This included 201 IT decision makers in Australia.  They came from organisations in companies with 50 or more employees in the U.S., EMEA, and APAC.

Resources: 

Download the full report: https://www.barracuda.com/office365-ccb  

Download Future shock: The cloud is the new network: https://www.barracuda.com/cloud-market 

Download Secure SD-WAN: The launch pad into cloud: https://www.barracuda.com/sdwan-report-2020  

Download Cloud networks: Shifting into hyperdrive: http://www.barracuda.com/sase-report

Read the blog post: http://cuda.co/45804

About Barracuda  

At Barracuda we strive to make the world a safer place. We believe every business deserves access to cloud-enabled, enterprise-grade security solutions that are easy to buy, deploy, and use. We protect email, networks, data and applications with innovative solutions that grow and adapt with our customers’ journey. More than 200,000 organisations worldwide trust Barracuda to protect them — in ways they may not even know they are at risk — so they can focus on taking their business to the next level. For more information, visit barracuda.com.  

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