Is Google Apps Backup Right for Your Organization?

As big supporters of living and working in the cloud, we often name the ability to work from anywhere as the greatest benefit of using Google Apps. But what happens when you can’t work from anywhere because your data has been lost or compromised? Data loss, a very real threat to any business operated in the cloud, is a concern we’re hearing more and more from our customers so I wanted to address it on our blog.

While Google goes to great lengths to backup several versions of your data, the company can’t protect you against intentional or accidental data loss, an obvious risk to your business, which can cost real money and eat up considerable IT resources. And while Google Vault, Google’s own archiving and eDiscovery tool, is useful for Gmail and chat recovery, it’s not meant to be used as a Google Apps backup mechanism. And with Google Apps’ broad range of functionality, your organization likely needs to backup all data in your domain – here’s why.

Protection from Malicious Users

A huge benefit of using Google Apps and Drive in particular is the ability to quickly collaborate, edit and share. But, with great power comes great responsibility. The documents created and owned by any one user may be shared and used by dozens of other users. Ultimately though, the document owner has the power to delete the document with the simple click of a button, potentially erasing hour and hours of work.

While a well-meaning user would never delete a document intentionally, we’ve all heard stories about the departing disgruntled employee seeking to “get even” with their former employer. A Google Apps backup solution can protect your company from data loss caused by a malevolent user and keep everyone else on track.

Protection from Human Error

Speaking of well-meaning users (yours truly included), even the best-intentioned among us make mistakes from time to time and no amount of user training can completely eliminate the risk of human error. So while users may be well-educated on how to use – and not use – Google Apps, there’s always a risk data loss can occur. Using a Google Apps backup tool, you can quickly remedy any unintentional changes made to a Drive file, folder, calendar event or deleted email.

Resolve to Purchase a Backup Solution in 2014

Working in the cloud can sometimes give you a false sense of security. You no longer worry about backing up data to a massive external hard drive, experiencing painful crashes or losing hundreds of locally stored documents along with your lost laptop.

But the cloud also brings with it very real security concerns – hacking, service disruptions, compliance requirements, syncing issues and so forth. Thankfully, IT administrators are becoming more mindful of these risks and purchasing Google Apps backup solutions to mitigate data loss and return peace-of-mind to users, executives and customers. After all, while a backup solution can cost $40 per user per year as compared to $50 per user per year for Google Apps, the value of the data you need to backup could be in thousands or millions of dollars – in fact, it’s probably priceless.