Though backup is a known best-practice approach to IT risk management, many companies are overwhelmed by the number of sites that need to be backed up, according to a new survey released today by Barracuda Networks.
The study, Closing Backup and Recovery Gaps, asked more than 1,000 IT professionals, business executives and backup administrators about their data protection strategies and found that despite a desire for business continuity, organizations still struggle to take all of the necessary steps to fully secure their business' data.
According to the report, the rise of multi-cloud and multi-site environments has resulted in 57% of respondents saying they have to back up more than two sites for their organization, while 7% of respondents manage backups for more than 26 sites.
"When you combine this data with the new push for multi-cloud deployments, it’s clear the simpler days of companies managing a single site and on-premises architecture are a thing of the past. This makes remote management a key consideration for any backup and recovery solution, to help save valuable IT time and effort during day-to-day tasks and urgent recovery efforts," the report said.
When looking at the number of small to medium-size businesses (SMBs), over 60% have migrated to Office 365. Of those, 40% are not using backup tools because they assume their cloud provider handles backup and disaster recovery.
Databases (91%), email (68%) and proprietary application data (62%) are the most common types of data that respondents said they are backing up, but the report found that, "Increasingly, everything is deemed mission critical."
A large number of respondents (37%) are backing up multimedia data, and more than a quarter (28%) back up research and development data. "However, of some concern is the small number of respondents (16%) wanting to back up their SaaS data. This inaction is putting their business continuity at risk," the report said.
Despite the risk management capabilities of cloud backup, over half (59%) of respondents do not plan to migrate on-premise services to the cloud, with only 18% of respondents reporting that they are currently migrating.