How Spencer Academies Trust strengthened cyber resilience while reducing complexity

Empowering schools with simplified cloud security and data protection

Takeaways

• Education organizations are prime targets for identity‑based attacks and accidental data loss as cloud adoption accelerates.
• Simple, comprehensive backup for Microsoft 365 and Entra ID can dramatically reduce operational risk and recovery time, improving cyber resilience.
• Time saved on restores equals time reinvested in supporting teachers, students and school leadership.
• Zero trust needs practical tools that are easy to deploy, manage and use.

Cloud migration and data protection

Like many modern education environments, Spencer Academies Trust, a large UK-based group of schools, keeps vast amounts of data in the Microsoft 365 cloud, including teaching materials, financial data and sensitive staff and student information.

The Trust’s 2022 migration to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra ID brought a host of conveniences and time-saving that’s very important to the organization’s lean IT team. But it also redefined cyber risk. One of the first orders of business following the migration was to find smarter ways to protect Microsoft 365 data, reduce identity-based risk and simplify regulatory compliance.

As Matthew Taylor, Director of Strategic IT and Infrastructure at Spencer Academies Trust, explains: “Security is something we’re always worried about, and it’s something the government is pushing in the new Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.”

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Choosing Barracuda

The Trust needed a backup strategy that could keep pace with those risks, without overwhelming a small IT team. After evaluating multiple options, Spencer Academies Trust selected Barracuda Cloud‑to‑Cloud Backup and Barracuda Entra ID Backup Premium.

They were already using Barracuda Email Protection, so Matthew and his team felt confident that they were making the right choice to help them protect critical Microsoft 365 and identity data, support a zero-trust approach to access controls and simplify recovery when things go wrong.

Minimizing IT overhead

Ease of use was a major differentiator for Matthew and his team.

“We have 26 IT staff supporting 22,000 users, which is nearly a ratio of 1 to 1,000. This means anything that saves us time goes a long way,” says Matthew.

Fast restores, intuitive navigation and broad backup coverage translated directly into reclaimed hours each week. That meant the team could put more time into its core missions of frontline support and strategic initiatives.

Just as importantly, the solution delivered confidence. Backup and recovery worked as expected, with minimal setup and ongoing effort.

“Entra ID Backup Premium just worked. We turned it on, enabled it, it’s backed up, and we’re happy,” Matthew says.

For Spencer Academies Trust, the result wasn’t just better cyber resilience. It was a simpler, more sustainable security posture that supports both compliance and educational outcomes.

To find out more about the technical details and understand Spencer Academies Trust’s complete journey to better resilience and security in the cloud, get the full case study.