6 Common Mistakes in Google Workspace Backup

Google Workspace is a set of productivity apps, including Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet, and Calendar that enable teams to communicate and collaborate better. Does your organization use Google Workspace? Then you’re likely storing a lot of sensitive, confidential, or business-critical data in its cloud environment.

An unexpected event – malicious cyberattack, human error, power failure, or natural disaster – can lead to the irreversible loss or compromise of this data. Fortunately, you can avoid such adverse circumstances by taking regular backups of your Google Workspace data. It’s also important to avoid the 6 common mistakes in Google Workspace backup by following the best practices highlighted below.

What are these 6 mistakes and best practices? Read on to find out.

Common Mistakes in Google Workspace Backup

Here are the 6 common mistakes in Google Workspace backup that you should definitely avoid:

#1. Over-reliance on Google’s built-in backup controls

Google Workspace provides several native data backup options:

• Google Vault: A governance, eDiscovery, and data retention feature to retain, search and export data for compliance and legal purposes
• Google Takeout: A feature to download and export a copy of your data from Google Workspace apps
• Data Export: A Google Workspace Admin Console feature that enables admins to manually export Google Workspace data

However, it’s inadvisable to rely solely on these features for your data backup needs. Here’s why.

One, all these options require some manual intervention. This can be time-consuming and labor-intensive, making them suitable only for frequent or large-scale backups.

Two, native tools provide little protection from ransomware, insider threats, and other threats. This is because per Google’s shared responsibility model, you are responsible for implementing appropriate security controls to protect your Google Workspace data.

Three, there’s no “point-in-time” recovery option in these tools, so you cannot recover specific pieces of data (documents, spreadsheets, emails, etc.) in case of an adverse event.

Best practices to avoid this mistake

To ensure reliable backups and robust protection for your Google Workspace data, invest in SpinOne. This proven, customer-endorsed, third-party security platform offers automated backup and recovery functionalities via SpinBackup to provide complete protection for your entire Google Workspace.

#2. Not automating the backup process

By securely storing copies of your critical data in Google Workspace, you can safeguard your organization and customers against data losses, minimize operational disruptions and downtime, and also maintain compliance with many data privacy regulations.

But before taking backups, you first need to determine the right backup frequency and backup scope. Daily backups of your entire Google Workspace are ideal to minimize losses and ensure business continuity. However, you can choose your desired frequency depending on data sensitivity and criticality and also select specific Google Workspace applications to backup. It’s impossible to manage these considerations using manual methods, which make the backup and restore process complex, time-consuming, and error-prone.

Best practices to avoid this mistake

Adopt SpinBackup, an automated solution within the SpinOne platform to simplify the backup and recovery process. SpinBackup provides secure cloud storage and 1x or 3x daily automated snapshot backups, accelerating recovery from unexpected events, minimizing data losses, and ensuring complete peace of mind for your team.

#3. Not testing backup restorations

In addition to taking backups, it’s also important to test each backup and confirm its reliability and integrity. If you skip this step, you may not know whether the necessary data can actually be recovered to protect your business from disruptions, financial losses, and reputational damage.

Best practices to avoid this mistake

A backup restore test involves simulating various data loss scenarios to verify that the required data can be recovered and restored when needed. Testing will also help you to assess the effectiveness of your data recovery systems, determine their flaws, and implement necessary optimizations, so you can:

• ensure reliable and speedy recovery
• reduce data losses
• maintain the integrity and usability of recovered data

SpinBackup provides a fast and easy way to test restores and ensure their integrity. Click here to learn more.

#4. Ignoring granular data recovery options

An “all-or-nothing” data restore process, where the entire Google Workspace environment is fully restored to a previous state, is straightforward and therefore easier to manage. However, it’s also problematic.

There’s no way to restore specific files or folders within a Google Workspace backup, so you will need to restore the entire backup. This can be very time-consuming. The backup can also include a lot of unnecessary data that you will have to review to find and access your desired data point.

Best practices to avoid this mistake

If you need to:

• frequently restore a small number of files 
• recover individual accidentally deleted files
• recover specific versions of documents,

then a granular or “selective” restore option can be the better data restore approach than the all-or-nothing approach.

Since you can selectively recover specific files or folders from a backup, this strategy accelerates data restoration, thus minimizing losses and downtime. It also provides a reliable way to quickly recover critical data in the event of a disaster. Additionally, it minimizes data redundancy and helps to optimize recovery costs since you only need to restore necessary data.

#5. Overlooking security in backup storage

Another common mistake in Google Workspace backup: overlooking security in backup storage. An insecure storage solution makes your backup data vulnerable to a range of threats, increasing the potential for data losses and its associated repercussions.

Best practices to avoid this mistake

To avoid data losses, invest in a secure solution that provides effective protection for your Google Workspace data from leaks, losses, ransomware, and insider threats, plus shadow IT, misconfiguration errors, and compliance risks.

These practices can provide added protection for your backup data:

• Encrypt all data
• Limit who can access and modify backup data with strong access controls
• Protect the backup dataset with strong passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Regularly patch all backup software and systems to plug exploitable vulnerabilities
• Follow the 3-2-1 rule:

• Create three data copies
• Maintain two of those copies on different media
• Maintain one copy at a reliable, secure offsite location

#6. Non-compliance with regulatory requirements for data retention

Many data privacy regulations include caveats regarding data retention periods. Ignoring these caveats will put you at risk of financial penalties, legal proceedings, and loss of customer trust.

Best practices to avoid this mistake

Create a detailed data retention policy. The policy will provide the framework you need to:

• safely backup and manage your Google Workspace data
• enable recovery in case of a disaster
• maintain regulatory compliance

A retention policy will help ensure that data is retained only as long as necessary and properly disposed when it is no longer needed. This then will streamline data management and reduce storage costs.

However, creating a data retention policy can be a complex endeavor.

SpinBackup from Spin.AI simplifies these complexities with automations and powerful features for intelligent planning, error handling, and rate limit management. The platform also offers flexible data retention policies (6 months to indefinitely) so you can configure a policy that’s best-suited to your unique retention requirements.

Conclusion

To prevent data losses and protect your business from downtime, financial losses, regulatory fines, and reputational damage, it’s essential to avoid the 6 common mistakes in Google Workspace backup highlighted above. We hope this article helps you to implement a robust backup strategy to safeguard your data and organization. Ready to build a strong, automated data backup process? Click here to request a fre