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SaaS applications provide businesses with the convenience of accessing software over the internet, eliminating the need for expensive hardware and IT personnel to manage the software and data. For years, there has been an ongoing shift to SaaS apps as they also provide businesses with improved collaboration, productivity and the flexibility to scale up or down as their needs require, which is important for medium and large organizations in terms of business agility. However, one major oversight for many thousands of SaaS apps now on the market is their lack of business-class data protection.

This situation is made clear in the vast majority of SaaS vendor terms of service which make statements like “We recommend that you regularly backup the content and data you store on the services or use third-party apps and services (Microsoft Support: https://docs.microsoft.com)” or “Archive your content frequently. You are responsible for any lost or unrecoverable content. You must provide all required and appropriate warning, information and disclosures. Intuit is not responsible for any of your content you submit through the services (https://quickbooks.intuit.com/global/terms-of-service/).

The Enterprise Strategy Group report was conducted across mid- to large enterprise IT professionals in North America. The quantitative web-based survey received 398 completed surveys back from which the report was generated. Some of the more notable findings are:
• The Top 5 Ways Users Lost Their SaaS Data – Service outage/unavailability ranked number one, followed by malicious deletion from a cyberattack, accidental deletion, account closure and insufficient or a deficient backup mechanism.
• The Top 5 Challenges to Properly Protecting SaaS Data – Security/privacy concerns, data loss concerns, backup solutions not integrating into enough SaaS applications, volume of data to be protected too high for the current backup solution to protect, and concerns that IT staff will be giving up too much control to the SaaS vendor.
• The SaaS Backup Disconnect Persists – 33% of SaaS application users still rely on the SaaS vendor as of 2022 to protect the organization’s data, down from 37% in 2019. While this number has decreased over the past several years, 33% is still a concerning percentage that puts organizations at risk.
• SaaS Applications Not Immune to Data Loss – 50% of SaaS users that did not implement anything to backup their data, experienced data loss or corruption in the last 12 months, while the other 50% of those who did backup their SaaS applications were able to recover their data.
• Top Selection Requirements for SaaS-based Data Protection Vendors – Security capabilities, speed of recovery, flexible recovery options, quality of solution development, and flexibility in selecting a cloud repository vendor/service or locale.

According to Christophe Bertrand, Senior Analyst and author of the report, “SaaS data protection is a top priority by a majority of organizations with budgets expected to increase. Funding the protection of a wide range of applications throughout an organization will be a team sport and application managers will be key to this effort.”

"As more businesses rely on SaaS applications for critical business operations, it’s imperative that they prioritize the protection of these apps,” said Eric Simmons, CEO of Asigra. “With the increasing amount of data being generated, stored, and shared through these applications, it’s crucial to have a comprehensive backup and recovery solution like SaaSBACKUPSM in place, to to protect both the popular and more obscure applications. Companies that neglect this, risk losing critical information and suffering both costly downtime and reputational damage.”