Organizations have become more reliant on Microsoft Office 365 and its other apps as work-from-home became the norm the past year. However, the latest report from Barracuda titled “The state of Office 365 backup” saw IT decision-makers (ITDM) are concerned about the security of these applications.

Taking in over 1,800 responses from ITDM in the United States, EMEA, and the Asia Pacific (APAC), the report found organizations have been using heavily Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams and this also meant a struggle to protect Office 365 data.

According to the report, 73% of APAC respondents are concerned that their Office 365 data could be the target of a ransomware attack, with 58% admitting they have already suffered at least one attack since moving to remote working.

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“We are continuing to see organizations looking for comprehensive, easy-to-use backup solutions that are fast to get up and running and include capabilities like granular retention that aren’t included in Microsoft’s native functionality,” said Mark Lukie, systems engineer manager, Barracuda, Asia-Pacific.

Data privacy

The research also revealed that around 7 in 10 IT heads in the region are concerned not about compliance with data privacy requirements, with 69% reporting that they worry about data being backed up outside their geography (geo residency), and 75% stating a preference for Software as a Service (SaaS) backup for Office 365, meaning there is no hardware or software to maintain. Results also showed 80% of APAC respondents want the ability to start running their first backups immediately upon signing up for a new data protection solution.

The study also found that organizations in the region felt a need for more granular restore and other functionality not available in Microsoft’s native capabilities, including better restore of Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams (77%), along with the ability to recover mailboxes to another location or user (76%).

The survey, commissioned by Barracuda and conducted by independent market researcher Censuswide, includes responses from global ITDM, including 1,828 executives, individual contributors, and team managers with responsibility for their organization’s cloud infrastructure in companies with 50 or more employees.