74% of Indian IT decision-makers say their organization has experienced a ransomware attack: Barracuda Networks

Barracuda has released key findings from its latest report titled The state of Office 365 backup. The research surveyed global IT decision makers of which 213 were from India. The idea was to capture their opinions and perspectives about Office 365, data security, backup and recovery, SaaS solutions, and a variety of related topics.

The survey, conducted by independent market researcher Censuswide, includes responses from 213 executives, individual contributors, and team managers shouldering the responsibility for their organization’s cloud infrastructure. They came from Indian organizations with 50 or more employees.

The findings of the survey indicate that the worldwide 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

Even though 84% respondents say that their organizations continue to rely solely on capabilities built in Office 365 to backup and recovery Office 365 data. 89% of respondents are concerned that their Office 365 data could be the target of ransomware

74% of Indian IT decision makers say their organization has experienced a ransomware attack

Organizations want granular restore and other functionality not available in Microsoft’s native capabilities

92% of IT decision makers agree that granular restore of Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams is important to them

90% want to be able to recover mailboxes to another location or user.

Data protection is both a security and a regulatory concern

While 93% of respondents want to be able to set their own back up schedule, 87% are concerned about data being backed up outside their geography (geo residency)

94% of respondents are concerned about compliance with data privacy requirements

Organizations prefer a SaaS solution that is fast and easy to get up and running.

88% of the IT decision makers surveyed say that SaaS backup for Office 365—i.e., no hardware or software to maintain—is important to them.

Meanwhile, for 94% of the surveyed individuals, a simple and all-in-one licensing solution is important for storage and computing.

94% of respondents want a back up solution that runs on Azure and stores Office 365 data in Azure

94% of individuals want to be able to start running their first backups immediately upon signing up for a new data protection solution.

Speaking on the findings of the survey report, Murali Urs, the Country Manager of Barracuda Networks (India) said, “Amid the dramatically rapid shift to remote working set up and increasing dependence on SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams over the past year, protecting Office 365 data has turned out to be all the more crucial requirement than ever before—and more challenging. Therefore, organizations are now looking for comprehensive, easy-to-use backup solutions that are fast to get up, running and include capabilities like granular retention that aren’t included in Microsoft’s native functionality.”