Disaster Recovery: From Research Teams to Google Workspace

Joining us in this session will be Cheryl Kiras, System Administrator at Mount Holyoke College, who will discuss the challenges that the college faced when backing up data from various research teams. We’ll share how they implemented a tiered disaster recovery plan, which helped Mount Holyoke College achieve a secure, centralized backup solution for its teams’ sensitive research files. This session will cover best practices for creating and managing a recovery plan for different teams while adhering to data governance policies. Organizations are storing more and more data on SaaS platforms such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Many people assume data stored in the cloud is backed up, but protecting cloud data is the responsibility of colleges and universities. This session will examine the data retention policies of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. Backups provide a safety net when things go wrong and are an indispensable part of planning your infrastructure. However, many educational organizations do not have a well-structured backup strategy in place to protect data. In this session, we will cover best practices for SaaS backups and how to enhance restoration efficiency for business continuity.