What Is Cloud-Based Archiving and Why Is It Important for Businesses?

Posted on 13 Jan 2022

Archiving is the process of ensuring all data is secured and stored properly. This information may or may not be active, but it must be accessable and safe long term. Archiving started first for documents, but now has transitioned to be primarily for digital records. Specifically, email and all the new forms of electronic communication.

Archiving data is needed for more than just compliance and legal discovery. It’s needed by Human Resources, Sales, Customer Service and more. Archiving allows businesses to have more control over their information processes to manage, monitor and leverage business communications.

Data that is not archived is not indexed for retrieval and can be unreachable in a meaningful manner. When data is needed, speed, accuracy and access control are vital. Failure to find and produce communication records will have a negative impact.

Why Should Businesses Archive?

During the pandemic, businesses adopted cloud technology to support the Work-From-Home environment and increase communication between employees. Products like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom and Webex were rapidly adopted. Since businesses were in a rush to turn on these services, they gave little thought to data retention. Now, many are learning that just because data is in a cloud system, it doesn’t mean it is backed up or archived. These communications tools rely on a Shared Responsibility Model instead. Organizations must now address this retention gap.

Understandably, it does not make sense to bring data back on-premise to archive and protect it. That is why Donoma adapted our archiving solutions to meet today’s needs with a cloud-based multi-data archiving solution.

Cloud-based archiving combines Information Governance for compliance with cost-effective long term data protection. This prevents data loss and increases security.

Archiving vs. Backup

Most organizations must be able to prove they are retaining documentation of business operations for future purposes. This could be for knowledge transfer as well as legal needs. However, a traditional backup is not sufficient for legal, compliance and other contractual needs because it was never designed for finding specific records within the backup. Think of the example of a photograph. It captures a moment in time, but you cannot easily examine a specific pixel within that image.

Backups only capture a moment in time and will miss a lot of information; including changes that occur in between backups. They don’t index the data, and are not tamper-proof. Backups are designed to quickly restore entire servers after a failure or outage event. Backups were never designed for electronic searches. Trying to find specific files inside a backup is difficult. That difficulty makes it time consuming and expensive. Locating emails, instant messages and other electronic communications is almost impossible.

Another challenge with on-premise backups is that ransomware attacks don’t just lock down the servers and end user devices. They also ensure that the local backup is blocked.

Archiving and backup are both critical components of a solid data protection strategy. Even your backup should have a cloud component. For example, our FLxStore hybrid-cloud data backup service provides the best of both worlds. A local backup appliance provides speed, replication offsite to the cloud provides more security in the event of a ransomware attack.

Archiving, Ransomware & Business Continuity

Companies are struggling to keep up with the evolving ransomware attacks. When ransomware hits a company, it locks down the entire IT system, including the backups. Most organizations do not create “air-gaps” to segment and protect their data, but that is exactly what cloud-based archiving and data protection does. Not only is the cloud actually a more secure option, but it is more scalable, easier to manage and reduces the need for capital intensive IT hardware and software to be deployed on site.

Cloud-based archiving can protect your records in a model that is much more scalable, affordable while reducing business risk and supporting business continuity needs.

Data Archiving & Protection is Now an Executive Concern

Ransomware has become a visible and prolific business continuity threat. Senior leaders have quickly come to understand the issues. Protecting data is part of their duty to ensure the safety and continued operation of their organization. They now are heavily involved and care about data protection and governance.

Organizations need and want the ability to quickly locate specific “conversations”. Now these may be in text form (email, Instant Message, Team Chats), audio (voicemails, audio recordings) or video (Zoom video meetings and saved audio & video recordings). Data now must be automatically retained according to company policy, with provisions for extended legal holds management. Just as important, data needs to be automatically destroyed at the end of its lifecycle. The volume of data and activity make it impossible to do this properly without an automated archiving solution.

Cloud-Based Archiving Brings More Benefits

Cloud-based archiving solutions like OneVault makes it possible for organizations to reduce overhead, capital expenditures, and data management. It also makes it possible for them to be more operationally agile and provide services faster. The cloud enables companies to focus their resources and efforts on their core operations and outputs.

Archiving is No Longer Just for Largest Organizations

With newly developed cloud-based systems for communicating, organizations need to make sure cloud applications data is being archived. Archiving Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, Zoom, Webex Slack and similar systems have not been a priority for most organizations until now.

With the rise of wide-scale adoption of these new communications tools, ongoing regulatory and legal needs are also driven by privacy regulations like GDPR and it’s first US counterpart – the CPPA; the need for archiving is exploding.

Senior executives continue to prioritize data protection and business continuity. They want to protect their organization and related data assets. They also want to use archived information to support daily business operations. Even insurance carriers are scrutinizing how organizations are securing their data. Each wants to ensure systems are in place to support the fastest, most secure return to normal operation in the event of an outage.

Next Steps

Now that you have learned how important archiving is for business continuity, be sure to check out Compliance Archiving: Understanding Key Features You Need Today and download your free Buyer’s Guide Checklist of Key Archiving Features to help you compare options for your organization’s archiving needs. We’re also happy to show you how powerful and streamlined your archiving can be with a OneVault solution demo. You can even self schedule your demo for a time that works for you!