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Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

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Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#131

Post by _joel »

vkaku wrote: post #81
_joel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm a CTO for one.

Running Non Profit and managing infrastructure for pennies, is a real problem these non profits / small companies face. If a multi trillion dollar company won't afford to burn a few million a month, good luck getting any of these folks to buy and host their Sharepoint for cheap. This is not just a technical problem, and you know it. These people need real solutions, and asking for them to have an IT department isn't…

The solution isn't telling them to use a linux desktop.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#132

Post by rbanffy »

ahepp wrote: post #63
rbanffy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 150,000+ organisations were caught by surprise, I would say it’s clear whatever communication they had was not adequate. Organisations that didn’t have an off-boarding option (do nothing, pay the minimum, I’ll deal with it) selected should receive monthly reminders, then every 2 weeks (to multiple people), and one per week until a VERY alarming one the week before. And, of course, have all systems shut down and th…

I think we should take the headline claim that "over 170k nonprofits lost all their data" with a huge grain of salt. As far as I can tell, the only source for that claim is: > And he later learned he wasn’t alone, when another company service representative called the very next day and told him that roughly 171,000 small nongovernmental organizations “lost everything” in their OneDrive accounts. So a second hand acco…

Let’s say our grain of salt lowers that number by 80%. That’s still more than 20,000 non-profits losing all their data.

That’s still a pretty ridiculous number.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#133

Post by lenkite »

12_throw_away wrote: post #5

Yep, this is the sort of thing happens when you've deeply internalized that trustworthiness and continuity is not important. Microsoft today is not a serious company, it is not run by serious people, and it is at the forefront of a deeply unserious industry.

Even most non-serious companies generally tend to follow their own statements regarding product license duration which is a very fundamental thing.

"He renewed Canopy’s yearly license last October, and Microsoft had emailed him to confirm he would retain access until Oct. 4, 2026"

Someone decided to pull the plug anyways.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#134

Post by rbanffy »

crooked-v wrote: post #97
rbanffy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the official support channels in Microsoft are broken I can say, from first hand experience, the very best cloud providers have support channels that are, at the very least, unpleasant to use.

Apple is decent. The internal processes are opaque, but you can always pretty easily talk to a real person who can and will escalate things to real internal support teams as soon as the CSR scripts no longer apply.

Apple has always been brilliant, but they don’t offer a full spectrum of cloud services.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#135

Post by rbanffy »

3RTB297 wrote: post #109
rbanffy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never keep your data and your backups in the same place. That’s true for in-office servers, data-centres and cloud. If you must use cloud, use two different providers for your own services and backups. Also, have a disaster recovery plan ready, and exercise it regularly.

It really can't be understated how many non-profits operate on a shoestring budget and over-extend that few staff they can afford as a standard operating procedure, and have very low technical skill among everyone as they're mission-focused with what little resources they have. I've worked with and for a couple non-profits where IT help was someone's spouse or kid or brother willing to help out. Often I've been the s…

I know. I would expect a very hands-off backup process (for files it’d work better - it’s easy to set up file backups from a OneDrive to a cloud backup service), and, if the recovery is easy and obvious enough, the need to exercise it falls by a lot.

$500 also buys you 20+TB of local storage. It’s not cheap, and many non-profits might struggle with that, but it’s also a way to ensure that even if the world ends, the data is somewhere.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#136

Post by rbanffy »

sixtyj wrote: post #65
rbanffy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never keep your data and your backups in the same place. That’s true for in-office servers, data-centres and cloud. If you must use cloud, use two different providers for your own services and backups. Also, have a disaster recovery plan ready, and exercise it regularly.

Maybe I am in echo chamber, but none I know exercised recovery plan… ;) except of power plants and othe critical infrastructures, and maybe large enterprises. Others imho use 3–2-1 approach but haven’t tried to recover data.

I am happy to say I have a different experience, but I’m in a different echo chamber, and have been in very regulated spaces where DORA is unforgiving. Ideally, for a non-profit, you want a hands-off process as much as you can. If you need to, backup to whatever your cloud provider has for S3 buckets, on a different account.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#137

Post by _joel »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #86
_joel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't?

In the sense that I haven't seen any evidence there were backups, yeah they didn't have backups and prod in the same location. Or are you nitpicking about the word "prod"? Pretend they said "primary copy" instead.

In the sense that what the op wrote was wrong. You know, factually incorrect, bull, a yarn. Speaking as someone who used to let Iron Mountain come in to take backup tapes *off premises*

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#139

Post by pjmlp »

PonyoSunshine wrote: post #92
fwipsy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Azure? Looks like it takes more revenue than Windows and Office put together.

Azure is Microsoft's attempt to get into the market that Amazon dominates with AWS. Microsoft traditionally was a software company. Microsoft today is a desperate company trying to make money and stay relevant in a world fed up with the bull crap that they have been peddling over the years. Windows could have been so much more and better, but it's now a sold out clown show, just like XBox, just like Office, just like…

This still do much better than GCP, and quite relevant as 4 trillion valued company.

Re: Over 170k Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?

#140

Post by prymitive »

KronisLV wrote: post #127
iamniels wrote: post #121

This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, IT admins receive weekly e-mails from AWS, Google and MS that a certain service will shut down and that it will affect operations. In 90% of the cases, these e-mails are sent to all customers instead of only the affected customers, so admins get alarm fatigue. Secondly, instead of doing a rug pull, what's wrong with a 2-month brownout period? Only allow the admin to logi…

> Why is it always so hard for MS to say "Sorry, we made a mistake". Seems like no corpos ever want to say that. Surely it’s not because of some pride or PR? I’m guessing such an admission might also sometimes have legal risks?

Saying sorry means admitting guilt. If there’s guilt there some level of harm. If there’s harm you can be sued. Avoiding being sued due to causing harm usually means increased costs, because you now need to take care you didn’t take before. Higher cost means you’re less competitive. Being less competitive makes you less attractive investment target. So as always it’s all about money. Saying sorry == lower share price.
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