Collaborative Solutions fills gaps in SaaS applications data protection with Druva

Collaborative Solutions, LLC (a Cognizant company), (“Collaborative Solutions”) is a leading global finance and HR transformation consultancy that leverages world-class cloud solutions to help deliver successful customer outcomes for Fortune Global 500 companies, large, and medium-sized organizations across industries. It has a presence in more than 125 countries and has helped more than 1,000 organizations transform their business since 2003.

Long before the pandemic, the Collaborative Solutions’ IT team introduced an initial series of cloud-based services to help staff work together more easily. This included the rollout of Microsoft 365 and Salesforce.

The cloud-first strategy was great for staff productivity but created a challenge for Tiffany Tucker, vice president of security and technical services at Collaborative Solutions. One of her main responsibilities is meeting data privacy requirements while minimizing the risks of data loss. Increasing the team’s use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications elevated her concern about protecting data, especially under the vendor’s shared responsibility model.

“People don’t realize a company like Microsoft is responsible for maintaining platform uptime while you are responsible for the protection and long-term retention of your Microsoft 365 data,” Tucker said. “So if you rely on its built-in capability, you have inconsistency across platforms.”

Not only does that affect visibility, but it can also affect compliance with data security principles like the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) Triad, and regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “One of the key parts of data security is data access, so we need to be sure we can protect our data from ransomware or accidental deletion,” Tucker said.

Collaborative Solutions was already using Druva to back up 1,200 endpoints. It made sense to expand its use of the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud, but Tucker wanted to make sure it was the right solution.

“I had non-negotiables, and one of those was multi-cloud backup management from a single console,” Tucker said. “Druva was one of the few vendors that could protect both cloud and endpoints with that single pane of glass view. Plus, Druva already had established relationships with all our SaaS vendors, so we knew it would integrate seamlessly.”

Druva also met Tucker’s other requirements, like a solution delivered as-a-service and built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) — a separate platform from Microsoft Azure. One of the features where Druva stood out against the competition was with SharePoint. Druva’s nested data and retention permissions were a big differentiator from other solutions Tucker evaluated.

“We had a great experience with our endpoint backup, so extending our Druva partnership to include Microsoft 365 and Salesforce data was the natural next step,” Tucker said.

The team conducted a proof of concept with a few small device refreshes to see how Druva performed. Tucker knew smaller-scale restorations would be a good indicator of the reliability of the backups overall.

“It gave us confidence that if anything were to happen and we needed to restore data for our cloud resources, we could,” Tucker said. “We know ransomware attacks aren’t going anywhere, and we need to make sure if we are affected by ransomware, we can recover our data.”

Collaborative Solutions has 100% visibility into its backups of all 1,200 devices, as well as its Microsoft 365 and Salesforce data.

Plus, Tucker’s team has 24/7 access to data across platforms using a single console. That makes it easier to monitor crucial data while ensuring compliance with data regulations across the many countries where the team operates.

Those benefits are important, but the biggest benefit for Tucker is peace of mind. “If the backup fails for any reason, we know immediately,” Tucker said. “We get reports directly to our inboxes, and we know exactly where things stand. It’s a weight off our shoulders for sure.”

Going forward, the company will continue to expand its cloud usage. But Tucker has a firm policy in place for evaluating potential SaaS vendors – starting with a full risk assessment. “We analyze every vendor to understand what data protection gaps we need to fill,” Tucker explained. “We work off the assumption we will be hit with ransomware, and understand what our responsibility is versus the vendor. Having Druva as a foundation makes that crisis planning so much easier.”