Why Third-Party Backup for Google Workspace is Absolutely Critical

BY Spanning Cloud Apps

If you’re using Google Workspace for Work, you’re certainly in good company. With more than half of the Fortune 500 and over 5 million businesses using this cloud-based platform, it’s a popular choice for many.

They offer a suite of functions for enterprises including professional email, calendar, and of course, the ability to work from anywhere, so it’s hardly surprising that enterprises value the solution for productivity and collaboration across the workforce.

And along with those benefits, they also promise business-grade security and controls. So then why do you need third-party backup for your data?

Can I trust Google to look after my data?

First, we need to make it clear that Google Workspace is a safe and secure platform. It’s trusted by thousands of businesses, with good reason.

The platform will keep your data stored in their distributed data centers that are designed with resiliency and redundancy, eliminating any single point of failure. And Google will virtually protect your data, the same as if it were on your own server.

Google gives you full control over your data and doesn’t own it. According to their terms and conditions, they promise to never share it with anyone, and they will keep it for as long as you say so. If you ask them to delete it, as part of their SLA with customers, they will do so without question. This gives many customers confidence and peace of mind about managing their data in the cloud. However, herein lies one of the many reasons why a third-party backup solution is absolutely critical to keeping your business on track and your SaaS data as safe and available as you want it to be.

Why do I need a third-party backup solution?

As we mentioned, Google protects your information from loss through strict security and backup standards that apply to their own infrastructure, so it’s highly unlikely that they will lose your data, no matter what happens on their side of the equation. But what you’re not protected from are threats that can cause data loss on your side.

When data is deleted, Google has no way of knowing if you intended to delete it or if the deletion was done by mistake (human error) or malicious activity (like hacking, disgruntled employees, or malware). Regardless of the reason for deletion, Google’s promise to delete the information holds true, leaving no recourse for data recovery.

Below you will find the main causes for data loss from which Google cannot protect you. Fortunately, a third-party backup and restore solution can render each of these threats powerless to disrupt your business.

User Error

The biggest reason we suffer at the hands of data loss is user error. Whether it’s a slip of the mouse or a wrong swipe on your mobile device, deleting something you thought you didn’t need, or a well-meaning employee “cleaning up” his inbox by deleting old emails, accidents can happen, and Google cannot protect you from that.

Malicious Insiders

It’s not something we like to think about, but a disgruntled employee who has access to important files, customer data and passwords, can cause harm to your organization. The same applies for employees moving to a competitor – you need to ensure crucial information can be retrieved if the worst was to happen and that information was deleted.

Hackers

Another sad, yet pervasive trend today is hacking. It’s not enough to have strong passwords and encrypted files; you need to make sure you have an additional layer of protection that will help you recover quickly if and when a hacker or virus threatens to devastate your Google Workspace data.

Sync Errors

Sync malfunctions can be another major, and unexpected, cause of data loss. Third-party apps can corrupt or delete data within Google Workspace, especially during integration or when updating devices.

What does that mean for my organization?

Without backup, your organization can waste precious time and money attempting to recover from data loss. Often, it’s impossible to recreate information, and valuable intellectual property, contact information, and files and records are gone for good.

Without backup, data loss is costly to correct.

First, you need to consider the amount of money that you’ll have to spend recovering from your data-loss. Outsourcing specialists can cost extortionate amounts, and depending on how much data needs retrieving, will depend on how much you have to spend.

Data loss causes business downtime.

Even if you do have someone in-house who can work on retrieving your data, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be saving on cost. Not only is it bad news for your IT professionals who can’t do their daily duties, but it also means that other employees can’t continue with their work until the problem is solved.

It leaves you with compliance risk

In any organization, there are laws and regulations that we have to adhere to when it comes to data. If you suffer a data breach and can’t quickly recover, then you are at risk at being non-compliant with these regulations, and it could end up having to pay a lot of money in damages.

It can damage business reputation

It doesn’t matter how big your business may be, if you lose customer information, it will damage your reputation. According to reports, the average estimated value of a corporate brand or reputation is $1.5 billion, which is not something that a business can really afford to throw away, especially on something that could be so easily prevented by implementing third-party backup.

Spanning gives you the extra layer of protection

Helping to fill the gaps in SaaS data protection listed above, Spanning has become the most trusted cloud application backup and recovery solution on the market.

Not only do we specialize in enterprise-grade, robust backup and recovery capabilities, but we offer 100% Restore Guarantee for Google Workspace.

What is the 100% Restore Guarantee?

If we can back it up, we will restore it back into Google Workspace;
If we can’t back it up, we will tell our customers that we can’t; and,
If we fail to restore the data we backed up, we will give our customers 10x the money back for 1 year of the individual account

To learn more about our Restore Guarantee, visit our Google Workspace product page.