Microsoft’s Own Report Proves It: SaaS Backup Can’t Live in the Same Cloud

Every year, Microsoft publishes its Digital Defence Report. This year’s edition quietly confirmed what many CISOs already fear - and what most SaaS users ignore until it’s too late:

• Identity is now the #1 attack vector.

• Ransomware has evolved beyond encryption into corrupting and deleting backups.

• Shared cloud dependency creates systemic risk.

This isn’t a vendor opinion piece. This is Microsoft itself, admitting the cracks in the cloud foundation.

““Identity-based attacks remain the most common and impactful vector for compromise.” (Microsoft Digital Defence Report 2024, p.41)

"Attackers increasingly target cloud identity systems to gain persistence and expand their foothold." (Microsoft Digital Defence Report 2024, p.42)

Cloud dependencies can widen the blast radius of failures, and Microsoft’s own report shows how outages can span multiple facilities and hinge on complex dependencies.

And here’s the irony: most SaaS users still trust Microsoft, Google, or Salesforce to protect them - even as those very platforms confirm the risks.

When Your Production and Backup Live in the Same Cloud

Resilience requires separation. But today, many organizations still host both their production systems and backup copies within the same cloud provider.

It feels convenient. It looks efficient. But it creates a shared blast radius.

If an Azure outage, ransomware attack, or misconfiguration strikes production, it can hit backups at the same time - leaving you with nothing to restore from.

Resilience demands separation. Shared infrastructure means shared consequences.

When production and backup exist in the same cloud, they fail the same way.

As the report bluntly warns:

Microsoft’s own example of Azure Sphere shows how updates ripple across entire fleets at once: ‘hundreds of thousands of devices are updated within 48 hours…’ (p.76). That’s fine when everything works - but when production and backup sit in the same cloud, failures propagate just as quickly. Redundancy can look real on paper, but it collapses if everything depends on the same environment.

In other words: your redundancy is an illusion if everything lives in one place.

Where Microsoft Stops, Risk Begins

Microsoft pours billions into making sure its own cloud services stay online. But their remit ends there. Your resilience, the ability to recover data after a breach, outage, or insider attack - remains squarely your problem.

The Digital Defense Report puts it plainly:

Cloud interdependencies amplify the impact of outages and increase systemic risk.” (MDDR 2024, p.78). If your production systems and backups sit in the same cloud, they’re vulnerable to the same outage. Redundancy on paper quickly collapses into shared fate.

Regulators are already drawing the line. As the report cautions, “organizations must demonstrate resilience against systemic and third-party risks.” (MDDR 2024, p.71). Under mandates like CPS 230, boards must prove that backup and recovery are truly independent of the systems they protect. Depending on a single cloud to run and safeguard your business is no longer a defensible strategy.

Translation: if your production and backup both live in the same hyperscale cloud, they can both fail in the same way, through outage, misconfiguration, ransomware, or malicious insider action.

Identity: The Weakest Link

Attackers aren’t hammering the front gate anymore - they’re walking straight in with stolen keys.

As Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report 2024 makes clear:

Identity-based attacks remained the most common and impactful vector.” (MDDR 2024, p. 38).

And later:

Credential theft and abuse of federated identity systems provide attackers with persistent access.” (MDDR 2024, p. 41).

This isn’t a nuisance, it’s the foundation of today’s attack chains. When identity collapses, whether through an Entra ID misconfiguration, a compromised Okta token, or a supply-chain breach, attackers can wipe both production and backup in one sweep if they share the same platform.

In a shared-cloud world, the same keys that unlock production often unlock backup. That’s not resilience. That’s risk multiplied.

When production and backup live in the same cloud, the blast radius is shared. Independence is the only path to resilience

Ransomware Evolves: From Encryption to Corruption

For years, ransomware meant encrypted data and ransom notes. But as organizations improved their recovery strategies, attackers have adapted.

The Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024 makes it clear: 80% of organizations have attack paths exposing critical assets, and ransomware actors are actively exploiting those paths to disrupt recovery (pg62).

In other words, adversaries are no longer content with locking files. They are targeting the systems and processes that allow recovery - corrupting, altering, or deleting the very assets needed to bounce back.

That makes backups the new bullseye. And when those backups live in the same cloud, tied to the same identities and admin access, attackers don’t need to smash through another barrier, they simply walk through the one already open.

Shared credentials. Shared infrastructure. Shared failure.

Shared clouds create shared vulnerabilities. One breach in a multi-tenant environment can cascade into systemic failure - putting every tenant at risk.

Why Independence Matters

Resilience doesn’t come from replication within the same environment. It comes from separation.

True independence means:

• Immutable backups that can’t be deleted, even by compromised admin accounts.

• Geographic and platform separation so outages and systemic failures don’t take production and backup down together.

• Granular recovery options for Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Jira, Zendesk, and more.

It’s not just backup. It’s a different operating model: resilience by design.

Resilience only works when it’s independent. Shared cloud means shared failure - true third-party backup breaks free from the blast radius.

The Regulatory Angle

Frameworks like CPS 230, Essential Eight, and GDPR all demand demonstrable resilience against third-party and systemic risk.

“Organizations must demonstrate resilience against systemic and third-party risks.” (p. 71)

That means you must prove that recovery is possible even if Microsoft, Google, or Salesforce itself experiences a failure. Anything less is considered concentration risk.

For boards, this is no longer a technical decision. It’s a governance issue.

Conclusion

Microsoft’s own report confirms what many have been saying for years: backups that live in the same cloud as production do not equal resilience.

Resilience comes from independence. From having a copy of your data that is immutable, isolated, and instantly recoverable - outside the blast radius of the cloud that runs your production.

That’s why FullBackup partners with Keepit - the only SaaS backup platform architected outside the hyperscalers. Keepit ensures your critical SaaS workloads are recoverable in minutes, even if the cloud provider itself is compromised.

One platform. Every workload. Keepit protects the SaaS data that matters most.

Call to Action

🔒 Resilience only works when it’s independent.

Don’t just back up. Recover - instantly, securely, independently.

👉 Read the full Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024 here: Microsoft.com/security/digital-defense-report

👉 Or book a 20-minute pilot with FullBackup and see independent resilience proven in your own environment.