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What is GovCloud Backup
The last decade has witnessed a rapid shift towards digitalization, leading to the adoption of cloud technologies across the public and private sectors. Government agencies in the United States have been instrumental in driving this shift, not only by adopting the cloud but by creating and updating regulations regarding the secure backup, retention, and storage of data in the cloud.
These heightened security requirements for backing up and storing sensitive and classified data in the cloud not only apply to federal, state, and local government agencies but to those that work with them, including:
- Managed service providers (MSPs)
- Cloud service providers (CSPs)
- Systems integrators (SIs)
- Organizations operating in heavily regulated industries, such as medical and financial organizations
The United States Government Cloud Market size was estimated at USD 3,204.44 million in 2021, USD 3,684.76 million in 2022, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 16.54% to reach USD 8,031.11 million by 2027.
– ResearchAndMarkets.com
During the pandemic, many government agencies accelerated cloud adoption to meet flexibility and scalability requirements as demand for services and remote work increased, just as it did in the private sector. As cloud adoption increases, it’s more important than ever for all these groups to understand and meet the requirements for secure data backup and recovery in cloud environments.
MSPs can enable many organizations to overcome these challenges by providing access to intuitive, secure, scalable cloud backup and recovery solutions that are easy to deploy and use as well as education regarding who needs this service.
10 Reasons You Might Need GovCloud Backup
- You have files that require FedRAMP Moderate compliance
- You are located in the United States and need to ensure data is stored and processed in compliance with local laws and regulations
- You work with government agencies or municipalities
- You want to minimize your chance of data loss in case of disaster, including cyberattacks
- You want a secure cloud backup that is separate from your primary environment
- You need to ensure every element, including data storage, transmission, and management, is confined to the United States — as well as the people accessing the data
- You need to comply with regulations to retain data securely and need that data readily available for audits and reviews
- You need data to be accessible exclusively to a U.S.-based workforce with explicit permission for access to ensure continuing operations in emergency situations by enabling frequently updated backups, providing data redundancy, assuring rapid data recovery, ensuring remote accessibility, and offering cost-effective
- You need an automated and incremental backup that is simple to manage
- You need granular administrative roles to ensure control over data sharing and access
Secure Cloud Backup Is a Core Component of Digital Transformation
While cloud-first and later cloud smart initiatives have advanced cloud adoption, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) highlights four primary challenges: ensuring cybersecurity, procuring cloud services, maintaining a skilled workforce, and tracking costs and savings. As cloud adoption has grown and cyber threats have kept pace with that growth, finding the right partner to help with these challenges is essential. MSPs can help by ensuring that the solutions in their portfolio offer secure, compliant backup and recovery.
Nearly 80% of nation-state attackers targeted government agencies, think tanks, and other non-government organizations.
– Microsoft Digital Defense Report
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) established the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) in 2011 to provide a standardized approach for choosing and authorizing the use of cloud services that meet federal security requirements.
FedRAMP authorizes Cloud Service Offerings (CSOs) at three different impact levels (Low, Moderate, and High) and three security objectives: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The Moderate level is most appropriate for CSOs where the loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability would seriously affect an agency’s operations, assets, or individuals.
Nearly 80% of cloud service provider (CSP) applications receive Moderate authorization; it is the standard for cloud computing security for controlled unclassified information (CUI) across federal government agencies.
According to a 2022 survey of federal and state or local government IT leaders, agencies are struggling with data management, security concerns, and increased architectural complexity.
– Connecting the Clouds: 2023 IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS Forecast
FedRAMP, like other compliance and regulatory standards, is continuously evolving — the Rev 5 Baselines were approved and released on May 30, 2023. Other standards are increasingly becoming industry norms, including:
These escalating requirements mean that federal, state, and local agencies and MSPs must ensure their data backup processes are not only secure, but also compliant. Backing up data to a secure location within U.S. boundaries helps to minimize the chance of data loss and maintain compliance, enabling MSPs to provide services to the growing industry sector that is obligated to follow these standards.
The Problems GovCloud Backup Solves
By offering an easy, automated cloud backup and restore solution for sensitive and classified data, GovCloud Backup reduces the risk of data loss, makes disaster recovery easier, increases security, and meets compliance requirements. This allows MSPs to expand their service offering to a broader client base, including entities required to comply with more rigid standards in the public sector and other highly regulated industries, such as health care and finance.
GovCloud Backup makes downloading, restoring, migrating, and recovering data easy. Its advanced search tools ensure that data is discoverable and easy to manage while still providing granular role-based access control to ensure that no users have unauthorized access to sensitive information. Using GovCloud Backup, MSPs can expand their existing client base to include those who must meet the higher security and compliance standards required in the public sector.
Introducing Dropsuite’s GovCloud Backup
Selecting a cloud backup and recovery solution for the public sector necessitates a focus on high-security standards and regulatory compliance. When migrating CUI to the cloud, it must align with FedRAMP Moderate or equivalent, impacting how data can be stored, accessed, and transferred. GovCloud Backup is designed to address these needs.
Dropsuite’s GovCloud Backup supports Microsoft 365 (M365) Government Community Cloud (GCC) environments at the moderate level, an environment that provides enhanced security measures and compliance offerings to address the unique needs of the public sector. GovCloud Backup was designed to ensure compliance with industry regulations, including FedRAMP Moderate, HIPAA, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Publication 1075. M365 GCC is hosted in Microsoft’s government-only cloud environment, separate from the public cloud. Dropsuite’s product backs up data in this GCC environment to a secure external location, Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud (an environment entirely isolated from M365), to meet the requirements for the security of cloud backups for the public sector and ensure the availability of the data.
Dropsuite’s GovCloud Backup enables you to start backing up within minutes of creating an account to provide automated and incremental backup. It also:
- Allows downloading, restoring, and migrating data with a single click
- Includes unlimited storage
- Incurs no ingress or egress fees for users moving or transferring data
- Offers per-user pricing, so you only pay for what you need
- Enables free self-service download or export of data
- Provides access to backups from any device or location, ensuring your disaster recovery is simple
Simple, Secure, & Scalable Backup for the Public Sector
The data security landscape and regulations continue to change to meet the requirements of rapidly evolving technology. It is critical to have a robust, secure, and compliant cloud backup solution to stay ahead of those changes. MSPs must assess their current strategies and offer secure, scalable cloud backup and recovery to new and existing clients to provide them with easy-to-use backup and recovery tools that meet the growing compliance requirements in the United States.
Talk to our experts here to learn how Dropsuite’s GovCloud Backup enables secure cloud data backup and recovery for the public sector.
