This means you would need to manually review file versions and recover them one-by-one.
However, this strategy involves a lot of heavy manual labour (especially if you have a complex directory structure and many files). If a ransomware attack is discovered soon enough, Workspace administrators can use Versioning to restore the data. It enables IT administrators to recover the last 100 versions of Google (Shared) Drives files. One important anti-ransomware capability embedded in Google Workspace is versioning. In the following section, we focus on the limitations of Native Google Workspace Recovery compared to Afi solutions. Many of the 20+ G Suite backup options have significant limitations related to the service reliability, backup or recovery speed, and the backup data immutability. Google Workspace ( formerly G Suite) backup companies were originally founded in 2008.
Third-party G Suite backup solutions appeared almost at the same time as Google Workspace (then G Suite) in 2006. Thus, a potent backup tool such as Afi is essential in order to protect your organisation's data. Unfortunately, this means that the collaborative nature of Workspace which is so advantageous to business, can aid in ransomware being more widely spread. Malware often uses local shared file servers (NASes, SMB shares) to infect as many machines as it can. Drive File Stream can then sync the changes and therefore encrypt the versions of the files stored in Google Drive and Shared Drive. It instead infects your users’ devices and encrypts data on their machines. It is important to understand that ransomware cannot be executed and run directly in your Google Workspace environment. However, industry analysts have reported the emergence of new types of ransomware that target cloud data sources. Positively, in the first half of 2020, no Afi customers experienced a ransomware attack affecting their Google Workspace data.
The malicious software is designed to block access to organisational data until a ransom is paid. The threat of ransomware is probably the most frequent motive to look for a data protection solution. Essentially, using Afi protects and restores organisational data which may have fallen victim to ransomware, deletion mistakes or malicious treatment. Launched in 2017, it became the youngest Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) backup vendor, and differentiated itself from competitors by leveraging AI to automate data protection. What is Afi?Īfi is a modern and reliable data management and protection solution for cloud IT environments. In this article, we discuss relevant risks to your Workspace data and how they can be addressed by Afi. Whilst Google Workspace offers embedded data protection settings and experiences downtime that rarely amounts to minutes per year there are times where this is insufficient and a 3rd party backup tool, such as AFI, is essential. When businesses migrate from on-premise email to Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), they face the decision whether they need to back it up in the same way they protected their on-premise data.
Most organisations that use on-premise email and collaboration tools rely on backup software to protect their systems from hardware failures, malware, mistakes and malicious insiders. From discussion around what a backup tool is, why it's important and how Afi stands out in the market it is designed to aid you overcome your data protection concerns. The purpose of this article is to explain everything you need to know about the Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) data backup tool, Afi.
If you are one of the many professionals that don’t feel prepared for such an attack, or you are worried about your organisational data, this is the guide for you. Analysts report that by 2021, a ransomware attack will take place every 11 seconds.