In today’s fragmented IT landscape, organizations are using an astonishing number of SaaS applications, with mid-market companies employing over 200 applications and enterprises utilizing upwards of 600–900 services. This proliferation creates significant data protection challenges that traditional backup solutions aren’t designed to address.

The SaaS Protection Gap

The conversation around SaaS backup has evolved dramatically. While protecting Microsoft 365 was once the primary focus, organizations now recognize that critical intellectual property and operational data reside across dozens of other SaaS platforms – from GitHub repositories to healthcare management systems.

“Six years down the road, they understand this is an issue,” explains Simon Taylor, founder and CEO of HYCU, who notes that 60% of malware attacks and supply chain attacks now emanate from SaaS applications.

Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Expose Critical SaaS Data

Recent high-profile incidents have highlighted how supply chain attacks target SaaS providers, enabling the compromise of multiple organizations simultaneously. As Andy Fernandez, HYCU’s product marketing leader, explains: “Why would I go after somebody’s GitHub user, where I can go after GitHub and get all of their organizations and get the best possible ransom?”

The threats aren’t limited to malicious actors. Internal users with access privileges pose risks, and even the SaaS vendors themselves can make critical mistakes. Fernandez referenced an incident where “Google in Australia deleted an entire pension fund project. Their entire project was wiped out, and they were unable to recover. $145 billion of a pension fund was wiped out.”

“The shared-risk model with SaaS providers still requires customers to be able to protect and recover data, even if the provider is compromised,” said Mitch Ashley, vice president and practice lead at The Futurum Group. “The more corporate data is fragmented across multiple SaaS platforms, the greater the need for data resilience strategies that don’t rely solely upon the service provider to recover critical data.”

R-Shield: Comprehensive SaaS Resilience

To address these challenges, HYCU is launching R-Shield, a cyber resilience solution built into its R-Cloud data protection platform. The solution follows three core principles:

Always Protected

R-Shield includes breakthrough functionality called “backup data cloaking” that makes backup data invisible to unauthorized users. As Subbiah Sundaram, SVP of product, explains: “The best way to do it in software is to eliminate the attack surface area.”

The solution also introduces R-Lock, providing immutable, customer-controlled backups for SaaS and cloud applications, extending immutability capabilities that were previously only available for on-premises data.

Always Watching

Unlike traditional anomaly detection that focuses solely on virtual infrastructure, R-Shield provides application-specific monitoring for SaaS platforms. This enables organizations to identify suspicious activities, such as privilege escalation or gradual data deletion, that might otherwise go unnoticed.

The solution also helps IT leaders discover and visualize the SaaS applications in use across the organization, providing critical visibility given the rapid adoption of new services.

Always Ready

Perhaps most innovative is R-Shield’s offline recovery capability, which allows organizations to recover their SaaS data even when the SaaS provider itself is down or compromised.

“Let’s say, for example, Salesforce is down or Box is down, you want the data even if the application is down,” explains Subbiah. “That’s why we are delighted with the offline recovery. This is the capability we can deliver for all of our SaaS.”

The Expanding SaaS Security Challenge

Healthcare organizations represent a prime example of SaaS dependency. From patient intake surveys to medical research platforms and health records, critical medical operations increasingly run on SaaS applications. As Fernandez notes, “It’s kind of scary when you think about the supply chain of a hospital and how many applications they’re using.”

With R-Shield, HYCU is addressing what it sees as a critical gap in the cyber resilience market. While competitors have focused primarily on on-premises ransomware protection, Taylor emphasizes that HYCU’s approach covers “the totality of our cloud” – protecting data across on-premises, public cloud, and the expanding universe of SaaS applications.

As organizations continue to adopt more SaaS applications, solutions that provide visibility, protection and recovery options across these fragmented environments will become increasingly vital for maintaining data resilience against the growing wave of supply chain attacks.