Drummond Community Bank was organized in 1990 by a group of Chiefland, Florida business owners who were passionate about adhering to two guiding principles: embracing the old-fashioned idea that banking remains a people business, and being open to “change” as a tool to enhance service. To ensure the bank remains a customer-first business, it is focused on trust, strong performance, and delivering exceptional service to its customers. It provides high-touch, concierge style services.
The principle of being open to change was evident as Drummond Bank was an early adopter of cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. The bank has survived financial difficulties, including hurricanes and the global pandemic, and its cloud strategy has been a facilitator of its resilience. With a lean team, the bank outsourced IT management to a managed service provider (MSP).
Microsoft 365 was the first SaaS solution the bank adopted, initially using Exchange Online. Because of Microsoft’s shared responsibility model, the most prudent course of action for organizations is to protect their Microsoft 365 data by using a dedicated third-party solution.
That’s why the bank’s CTO, Josh Branch, was shocked when he learned their MSP didn’t archive its Exchange Online data in Microsoft 365. “That’s too risky for a regulated financial institution with compliance responsibilities,” he said.
Josh realized the inherent data risks that needed to be addressed to ensure ongoing end-user productivity and to safeguard intellectual property. “We knew that we had to increase our technology portfolio, not just for our customers, but our infrastructure, too,” he added.
Migrating data protection to the cloud
As CTO, Josh’s goal is to move the bank away from anything on-premises. He was looking specifically for a cloud-first solution to protect its Microsoft 365 environment that was more cost-effective than its current MSP. The solution needed to help the bank improve its compliance and cyber resilience.
One of the first solutions Josh’s team evaluated was Commvault Metallic, as it was offered by the bank’s MSP. However, Josh eliminated Commvault as a choice due to its on-premises server requirement. “It didn’t make sense to backup SaaS data to the cloud and bring it back on-premises as this would consume precious bandwidth,” he added.
He also briefly evaluated Archive360, but it required the setup and management of an Azure instance to ensure enough CPU or disk space, further complicating the process. The CTO determined that Druva was the only cloud-native platform with the features and capabilities the bank needed.
Druva is uniquely positioned to help businesses navigate the data risks and security challenges of the cloud era. Its approach to cloud data protection utilizes both an advanced algorithm and unique encryption model where the data and metadata are decoupled and encrypted. This guarantees that data is only accessible to customers, which is a critical component to meeting today’s evolving privacy regulations.
To protect businesses against ransomware attacks, Druva’s platform provides a holistic, multi-level security response strategy, which incorporates extensive prevention measures to account for threats. This empowers strong resilience to minimize downtime during a ransomware attack.
Druva provides confidence to roll out SharePoint and OneDrive
Before Druva, Josh was hesitant to introduce Microsoft SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive to employees. Now, he’s ready to move forward as this cloud-native data protection solution delivers consistent data retention for Microsoft 365 and automatically restores data to original locations.
“I have the confidence with Druva to roll out the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite to our users. I know the data will be protected against ransomware and be quickly recoverable should a security event occur,” Josh said.
Leveraging the cloud to deliver concierge services
“I now have more capacity to make life easier for the bank’s customers,” Josh said. This provides a distinct advantage for the company to stay relevant in the digital era. “When COVID hit, it was obvious that digital banking services are no longer a convenience – they are a requirement,” he said. That’s why he plans to leverage Druva and bring more of the bank’s products into the cloud.
What’s next?
Read the new Drummond Community Bank case study to learn more about how the bank can build fraud cases — if needed — 99.9% faster with Druva compared to its previous reliance on Microsoft. And, how it restored a deleted SharePoint folder within minutes — meeting compliance requirements related to customers’ private information.