Yes, no, kind of…. When you listen to the arguments whether your Office 365 / GSuite data should be backed up or not, the underlying winner of the conversation is the the 3-2-1 backup rule. A revered and time-honored backup strategy that simply states: you should have 3 copies of your data on 2 different media with 1 copy off-site for disaster recovery.
Microsoft 365 / GSuite is one copy of your data. Potentially you might have a copy on your computer (depending on the settings of your program) which brings you to 2 copies, if you’re lucky.
What does Microsoft say? We recommend that you regularly backup Your Content and Data that you store on the Services
Worst case scenarios like hackers, encryption from ransomware, disgruntled employees, accidental deletion and accidental overwriting can cause major issues for businesses, with most requiring a fast and effective recovery option in place.
To solve the gap in the backup strategy we have a simple and secure Microsoft 365 backup solution from around $10 per user per month.
On the Microsoft side it includes: Email backup, Shared Mailboxes, Calendars, Contacts, OneDrive & Sharepoint with data protected at rest with 256-bit AES encryption and while in transit using SSL encryption. You can search and recover individual files, folders or emails with the build in Item-Level Recovery.
Our GSuite version also offers similar options: Gmail calendars, contacts, entire mailboxes. Google Drive, Team Drives with the same data encryption and restoration options.
Chat to us today about a simple and easy Office / GSuite backup solution that’s approximately $10 per user per month.
Critical Reasons for Office 365 Backup
With Office 365, it’s your data. You own it. You control it” The Office 365 Trust Center.
As a robust and highly capable Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, Microsoft Office 365 fits the needs of many organizations perfectly. Office 365 provides application Availability and uptime to ensure your users never skip a beat, but an Office 365 backup can protect you against many other security threats.
You or your boss might be thinking, “The recycle bin is probably good enough.” This is where many people get it wrong. The average length of time from data compromise to discovery is over 140 days 1. A shockingly large gap. The likelihood is high that you won’t notice something is missing or gone until it’s too late for the recycle bin.
By talking with hundreds of IT professionals across the globe who have migrated to Office 365, six vulnerabilities in data protection rise to the top:
#1 Accidental deletion
If you delete a user, whether you meant to or not, that deletion is replicated across the network, along with the deletion of their personal SharePoint site and their OneDrive data.
Native recycle bins and version histories included in Office 365 can only protect you from data loss in a limited way, which can turn a simple recovery from a proper backup into a big problem after Office 365 has geo-redundantly deleted the data forever, or it has fallen out of the retention period.
There are two types of deletions in the Office 365 platform, soft delete and hard delete. An example of soft delete is emptying the Deleted Items folder. It is also referred to as “Permanently Deleted.” In this case, permanent is not completely permanent, as the item can still be found in the Recoverable Items mailbox.
A hard delete is when an item is tagged to be purged from the mailbox database completely. Once this happens, it is unrecoverable, period.
#2 Retention policy gaps and confusion
The fast pace of business in the digital age lends itself to continuously evolving policies, including retention policies that are difficult to keep up with, let alone manage. Just like hard and soft delete, Office 365 has limited backup and retention policies that can only fend off situational data loss, and is not intended to be an all-encompassing backup solution.
Another type of recovery, a point-in-time restoration of mailbox items, is not in scope with Microsoft. In the case of a catastrophic issue, a backup solution can provide the ability to roll back to a previous point-in-time prior to this issue and saving the day.
With an Office 365 backup solution, there are no retention policy gaps or restore inflexibility. Short term backups or long-term archives, granular or point-in-time restores, everything is at your fingertips making data recovery fast, easy and reliable.
#3 Internal security threats
The idea of a security threat brings to mind hackers and viruses. However, businesses experience threats from the inside, and they are happening more often than you think. Organizations fall victim to threats posed by their very own employees, both intentionally and unintentionally.
Access to files and contacts changes so quickly, it can be hard to keep an eye on those in which you’ve installed the most trust. Microsoft has no way of knowing the difference between a regular user and a terminated employee attempting to delete critical company data before they depart. In addition, some users unknowingly create serious threats by downloading infected files or accidentally leaking usernames and passwords to sites they thought they could trust.
Another example is evidence tampering. Imagine an employee strategically deleting incriminating emails or files — keeping these objects out of the reach of the
legal, compliance or HR departments.
#4 External security threats
Malware and viruses, like ransomware, have done serious damage to organizations across the globe. Not only is company reputation at risk, but the privacy
and security of internal and customer data as well.
External threats can sneak in through emails and attachments, and it isn’t always enough to educate users on what to look out for — especially when the infected messages seem so compelling. Exchange Online’s limited backup/recovery functions are inadequate to handle serious attacks. Regular backups will help
ensure a separate copy of your data is uninfected and that you can recover quickly.
#5 Legal and compliance requirements
Sometimes you need to unexpectedly retrieve emails, files or other types of data amid legal action. Something you never think it is going to happen to you until it does. Microsoft has built in a couple safety nets, (Litigation Hold) but again, these are not a robust backup solution capable of keeping your company out of legal trouble. For example, if you accidentally delete a user, their on hold mailbox, personal SharePoint site and OneDrive account is also deleted.
Legal requirements, compliance requirements and access regulations vary between industries and countries, but fines, penalties and legal disputes are three things you don’t have room for on your to-do list.
#6 Managing hybrid email deployments and migrations to Office 365
Organizations that adopt Office 365 typically need a window of time to serve as a transition window between on-premises Exchange and Office 365 Exchange Online. Some even leave a small portion of their legacy system in place to have added flexibility and additional control. These hybrid email deployments are common, yet pose additional management challenges.
The right Office 365 backup solution should be able to handle hybrid email deployments, and treat exchange data the same, making the source location irrelevant.
Furthermore, you should be able to store the data anywhere you choose, whether on premises, in cloud object storage such as AWS S3 or Azure Blob, or with a
managed service provider.
Conclusion
Go ahead and take a closer look. There are security gaps you may not have been aware of before.
You already made a smart business decision by deploying Microsoft Office 365, now find a backup solution that offers you both complete access and complete control of your Office 365 data and avoid the unnecessary risks of data loss.