Companies globally opened for business on Monday to find themselves locked out of one of their most critical financial tools. Xero, the cloud-based accounting platform trusted by millions of SMEs and accountants for everything from invoicing to payroll, suffered a significant outage that left users unable to access or navigate the service for several hours.
According to Xero’s official incident report, the outage was traced to a network issue. The company acted quickly to resolve the issue, which was fixed after its systems were rebooted. However, the disruption lasted for hours.
The incident highlights a broader, more uncomfortable reality: even the most reliable SaaS platforms will inevitably go down at some point. When they do, the businesses that rely on them need to be ready.
Convenience vs risk
The cloud has transformed how modern businesses operate. Its convenience, scalability, and cost-efficiency have helped companies grow like never before. Xero is a prime example of this shift, providing real-time access to financial data from anywhere in the world. But incidents like the one that occurred over the weekend are a pointed reminder that depending on any single cloud platform carries inherent risks.
Delayed payments, postponed reports, and unanswered customer queries all risk a company’s reputation. Missed compliance deadlines can even throw a business’s whole existence into doubt, especially with tight monthly or quarterly cycles to meet.
What’s your backup plan?
Those impacted by the Xero outage may consider themselves unfortunate to have lost access to the service for a few hours. In reality, they got off lightly. Had the issue persisted, the consequences could have been catastrophic. This time, it was an infrastructure error. Next time, it could be data loss.
Too many organisations assume that SaaS vendors like Xero are solely responsible for protecting their data. As Xero’s service agreement states:
“Data loss is an unavoidable risk when using any technology. You’re responsible for maintaining copies of your data entered into our services”.
If your financial records are deleted, whether by accident, due to a system failure, or from a cyberattack, they’re gone forever – unless you have a third-party backup.
Redstor’s Xero Backup and Recovery
With Redstor, your Xero data is backed up automatically and continuously. From transactions and payroll data to client records and invoices, we give you peace of mind that your critical financial information is always protected.
Redstor enables fast, granular recovery of individual records or entire datasets with just a few clicks. It doesn’t matter whether the source of your data loss is accidental deletion, a malicious attack, or a prolonged service outage. We ensure that your data is never out of reach, even when Xero is.
Why businesses choose Redstor
Companies turn to Redstor to protect their Xero data for multiple reasons:
- Automated, daily backups: Set it and forget it. Redstor keeps your data safe without manual intervention.
- InstantData™ recovery: Recovers critical files and accounts to JSON in seconds. Import guide.
- Granular recovery: Restore exactly what you need, whether it’s one transaction or an entire ledger.
- Rapid integration: Get up and running in minutes with no hardware necessary.
- Immutable backups: Protect your data against ransomware and insider threats with tamper-proof backups.
- Multi-tenant management: Perfect for IT teams or MSPs managing multiple clients or entities.
Take control of your data
As this week has proven, no cloud service is infallible. Outages will happen. It’s only by ensuring you have the right recovery solution in place that companies can turn potential panic into nothing more than a shrug.
Don’t wait for the next outage to turn and ask, What’s our backup plan? Prepare for the worst by partnering with the best in Xero backup and recovery. Get in touch today to learn more.