Why Backup Microsoft Office 365?

Don’t fall foul of the shared-responsibility model. Microsoft doesn’t backup Office 365.

Businesses today come in all shapes and sizes, especially organisations using Microsoft 365. Whether you’ve currently got a Hybrid Cloud solution in place using Office 365 and on-premise Exchange – or even a complete Microsoft 365 cloud solution – your business objective should be to have an independent backup of your data in an off-site data centre.

office 365 cloud backup questions

The Microsoft 365 backup myth

“Microsoft already protects my 365 data as part of the service, so I don’t need to do anything.”

Many organisations think that by using Office 365 they are meeting data protection and compliance requirements, but this may not be the case.

What many Microsoft 365 users don’t realise, is that although Microsoft hosts the solution and takes care of the infrastructure, the responsibility of maintaining and protecting a copy of the data solely lies in the user’s hands.

If one of your employees deletes a critical project file, or worse, an entire folder of customer orders; with no backup, there’s no guarantee this information would be recoverable.

CloudCover 365 backup protects against:

ACCIDENTAL DELETION

INTERNAL THREATS

RETENTION POLICY GAPS

EXTERNAL THREATS

COMPLIANCE

MANAGING DEPLOYMENTS

Microsoft 365 terms and conditions

“If I use Microsoft 365, Microsoft has a duty to protect my data, doesn’t it?”

No. Microsoft itself states: “We strongly advise you to make regular back-up copies of Your Content. Microsoft can’t be held responsible for Your Content or the material others upload, store or share using our Services.” 

This is one of the reasons we created our Microsoft Office 365 backup solution. We strive to provide a comprehensive service with a range of features to help the modern organisation reach their objectives and compliance challenges.

Additionally, CloudCover 365 offers add-on immutable storage facilities. This is ideal for organisations that need to securely and affordably archive data for compliance purposes and to prove that data hasn’t been modified in any way.

Microsoft Office 365 data backup policies chart

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Microsoft office 365 backup - soft vs hard deletion

Time-limited Recycling Bins

“I’ve deleted my data before and managed to get it back straight away. This means I don’t need a backup.”

Without a Microsoft 365 backup solution in place, your data is managed by the default Microsoft policies. These settings only protect data for 30-90 days and some data even is even deleted after 14 days.

Additionally, research shows data breaches go undiscovered for an average of 197 days (Ponemon, 2018),  and when combined with nationwide increases in Ransomware and phishing attacks, organisations more vulnerable than ever before.

CloudCover 365 gives users the option to create custom retention periods that can be applied to all assets, including Office 365 mailboxes, deleted items, Microsoft Teams and more.

Free Infographic: ‘6 reasons to backup Microsoft 365’

What data protection does Microsoft 365 offer?

Microsoft 365 offers Geo-redundancy protection which is often mistaken for backup.

What is Geo-redundancy? 
Geo-redundancy protects against hardware or site failures, which means if there is an infrastructure issue or outage the software will automatically run on a secondary infrastructure in another location, so users have consistent access to the service.

Why is Geo-redundancy different from backup? 
With backup, a copy of the data is made and stored in another location. This means that if data is lost, deleted or attacked there will be an easily accessible copy elsewhere and this isn’t provided as standard with Microsoft 365.

CloudCover 365 FAQ

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