An ITWeb survey on M365 data protection, being conducted in partnership with Rubrik, has gone live. The objective of the survey is to gain insight into how South African businesses that use M365 are protecting their data against ransomware.

Werner Vorster, South Africa Country Manager of Rubrik, says the primary objective of the survey is to create awareness amongst corporate South Africa that M365 data is susceptible to ransomware and other cyber attacks, and in reality needs to be protected.

“There has been massive adoption of M365 across the board, which makes a lot of sense when you consider the ongoing shift to remote working as a result of the Covid pandemic. However, businesses don’t necessarily take all of the risks into consideration – they assume that because their data sits on Microsoft, it’s going to be safe. However, this is not necessarily the case.”

He goes on to clarify that statement: “Microsoft is excellent from a service availability perspective, but their speciality isn’t providing enterprise grade recoverability in the case of a cyber attack.”

“With the survey, we’re hoping to get an idea of the maturity of the local market in terms of understanding the risks involved for businesses using M365 as a tier 1 application. M365 and email are key to many businesses, particularly email now that remote working has become the order of the day. People aren’t able to have face to face discussions in the office and a lot of those types of conversations are now taking place on email.”

Vorster says, “We’ve seen several global businesses releasing white papers around the M365 environment becoming a new playground for cyber attackers. They’re gaining entry into M365 through user access because compromising user access is a lot easier than compromising data centre access. These reports specifically talk about M365 being a goldmine for today’s cyber criminals owing to the amount of valuable data and number of users interacting with the platform on a daily basis. We’re even seeing state-sponsored attacks, such as those seen during the Ukrainian war.

“The likelihood of a ransomware attack is a legitimate concern as this type of cyber attack accounts for some 50% of all phishing attacks. We recommend that businesses deploy a zero trust security solution for M365 that provides an air-gapped environment to safeguard your data with multiple recovery options.”

Aiming to shed some light on how these businesses are safeguarding their data, the survey asks respondents about their ransomware strategy for M365 as well as whether they’re familiar with Microsoft’s recommendations for ransomware protection for M365.

We hope you’ll be able set aside a few minutes of your time to participate in the survey, and stand a chance to win a lucky draw prize, a Takealot voucher to the value of R3 000. The detailed results of the survey, and the prize winner, will be published on ITWeb.

To play your role in compiling this M365 data protection survey trends report, follow this link.

M365 Data Protection survey goes live