SaaS backup and endpoint backup copy the data that never sat in a company's own server room: staff laptops, and rented browser apps such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. An endpoint is any device that one person uses, such as a laptop or a desktop. SaaS (software as a service) is software that a company uses in a web browser and rents by subscription.
Many companies assume that the app's provider backs up their data. It does, but not in the way they expect. The provider keeps its own service running, and it keeps extra copies so that its own hardware failures lose nothing. But if a user deletes a folder, or ransomware encrypts a shared drive, the provider keeps the deleted or encrypted version exactly as the user left it. Deleted items usually stay in a recycle bin for a limited period, often a few weeks or months, and then they are gone. The industry calls this the shared responsibility model. The provider looks after its service, and the customer looks after its own data.
Endpoint backup is a small program on each laptop. It copies new and changed files to the cloud every few hours, whenever the laptop is online, from home or from a client's office. SaaS backup needs no program on the user's device. It connects to the app through the connection that the app provides for outside software, and it copies each user's mail, files and chats.
Consider a chartered accountancy firm in Ahmedabad with 250 staff. Every employee works on a laptop, and the firm's email and shared files are in Microsoft 365. In March, before the tax deadline, a trainee accountant's laptop is stolen from a car. Its 18 months of client working papers were never on a server. The IT team gives her a new laptop and restores her files from the endpoint backup by the next morning. The team also wipes the stolen laptop remotely when it next connects to the internet.
Two months later, a senior manager leaves the firm, and his mailbox is deleted to save licence fees. A client then disputes advice that he gave in an email a year earlier. The firm restores his mailbox from the SaaS backup, which keeps every mailbox for seven years.
That second case touches the law. When a lawsuit is expected, a legal hold requires that the relevant mail and files are kept, and the backup supplies them. The same products also back up newer platforms such as hyperconverged infrastructure, where a company's servers, storage and virtual machines run as one system. SaaS security posture management does a different job for the same apps: it checks their settings and permissions, but it keeps no copy of the data. The servers in the server room are copied by backup and recovery software.