Catholic Education WA boosts Microsoft 365 data resilience with cloud

Catholic Education Western Australia has enhanced its data protection and recovery strategy by deploying a new solution specifically for its Microsoft 365 environment.

Catholic Education Western Australia, the state's second-largest non-government education provider, supports 162 schools and colleges across the region and educates nearly 17% of Western Australia's school-aged children. The organisation's focus on digital integration, which ranges from using iPads in classrooms to AI-enabled personalised learning, led to a significant increase in the volume and complexity of its digital data estate.

Changing demands

To meet educational needs, CEWA utilises over 90,000 Microsoft 365 accounts and manages more than 1PB of data. Lee Swift, Chief Information Security Officer at CEWA, highlighted the strategic value of cloud-based technology. Swift said, "We see cloud-based services as a powerful way to offer students the benefits of the latest technology without sending our costs soaring. As part of that strategy, we've migrated most of the on-premises file shares and mail servers at our schools to Microsoft 365."

However, as data volumes grew, the organisation found that native backup functions within Microsoft 365 did not sufficiently support its requirements, particularly around regulatory compliance and long-term data retention.

Swift explained, "We've seen education providers in Australia suffer cyberattacks that take months to recover from. To mitigate our risk and maintain a strong compliance posture, we wanted to deliver enhanced protection for our Microsoft 365 accounts."

Selection process

CEWA had been using Veeam Data Platform to safeguard over 60 VMware and Hyper-V environments across 300 on-premises servers. With positive prior experience, the organisation chose Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 for its cloud backup requirements.

"From the very start of the relationship, Veeam has always gone out of their way to understand our strategic direction and give us what we need to achieve our goals," said Kovacevic. "When we started the search for a data protection solution for Microsoft 365, Veeam knew exactly what we were looking for. And when we compared the features, market maturity and expert reviews of Veeam with solutions from other vendors, the best choice was clear."

The implementation process was shorter than anticipated. Working closely with Veeam and Microsoft, CEWA was able to deploy and configure the solution in less than an hour.

Swift noted, "The setup process for Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 was incredible - I didn't realise just how quick it would be. With over 90,000 Microsoft 365 accounts to back up, we were anticipating a months-long project that would require a dedicated manager and project plan. In fact, getting set up with Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365 took just 40 minutes. We were blown away by how easy it was."

Kovacevic added, "Our Veeam deployment was so fast and smooth that we were able to bring forward other important digital initiatives. This included a project to centralise privacy and security impact assessments for new AI and edtech tools - eliminating the need for each individual school to duplicate this work themselves."

Strengthening resilience

The new backup solution enables CEWA to retain Microsoft 365 data indefinitely and restore it on demand, which is a requirement for certain Australian regulatory standards such as the 'Essential Eight' cybersecurity framework from the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

Future plans at CEWA include streamlining data protection further by allowing IT managers at individual schools to restore student data for their own institutions, supported by audit trails for compliance and security.

Swift commented, "To further strengthen our data resilience, we're now looking to adopt a multi-cloud strategy - storing a copy of our Microsoft 365 data with a second cloud provider. We're looking forward to working with Veeam to make our multi-cloud vision a reality."

Results to date

Swift shared outcomes from the deployment: "With Veeam, we set up automated backup jobs for over 1 PB of Microsoft 365 data in under an hour. Crucially, there was zero impact for our users during the migration process."

In terms of efficiency, the organisation reports up to a 50% improvement in recovery speed. "Because we have such a massive Microsoft 365 environment, restoring data was never a quick job," said Swift. "Using the Veeam solution, we can now recover files for our users in minutes."

Retention capabilities also now exceed regulatory requirements. With immutable, unlimited cloud storage, CEWA ensures that its rapidly expanding Microsoft 365 data remains protected, secure, and accessible for more than 99 years as mandated for compliance.