Office 365 has been fundamental to the success of many business’ work-from-home strategies during the pandemic. The ability to access important corporate resources from any place on any device has helped maintain productivity as industry threatened to grind to a halt.
But now that remote working strategies are bedding in, it’s time to address the elephant in the room – Office 365’s less-than-adequate backup provisions.
Here are six reasons you must upgrade your Microsoft 365 backup provisions today.
1 – Accidental deletion
There are two types of deletion: soft deletion, and hard deletion.
Soft deletion is where an item is deleted but can still be recovered from a recoverable item mailbox (a bit like the recycling bin on your PC). A hard delete is where the item is purged from the mailbox database completely at which point the item is unrecoverable.
A proper Office 365 backup service will retain a copy of all data – even if it has been hard deleted by a user.
2 – Retention policy gaps and confusion
A retention policy gap is a period of time in which files/ accounts can be recovered. For example, if an employee leaves your company and their account is deleted, after 30 days any information will be deleted permanently. And if an employee was to go rogue and delete information, you could not recover that data if the 30-day window has elapsed.
A third-party Office 365 backup service offers indefinite retention, much like your existing on-site archiving solutions. So you don’t have to worry about thirty-day limits.
3 – Internal security threats
Employees operating from inside your company are actually a greater threat than hackers. Employees have access to a lot of company information, and security can be breached both intentionally and unintentionally. Office 365 has a major issue; it doesn’t automatically recognise the difference between a current employee and an ex-employee meaning that if you forget to disable their account, the leaver still has access to their email and data – and can maliciously delete anything they want.
External Office 365 backups will maintain a copy of everything the rogue employee thinks they have deleted.
4 – External security threats
External threats can enter the company through emails and attachments. Sometimes these are hard to detect, depending on the hacker’s level of skill and determination. Your company reputation and operations are at risk if your systems are infected with malware or ransomware.
Regular Office 365 backups will ensure that a separate, uninfected copy of your data is always available and can be recovered quickly.
5 – Legal and compliance requirements
Your organisation has a legal duty to retain certain communications and files. This information must be available in the event of a compliance audit or criminal investigation. Microsoft has built a couple of safety nets (such as litigation hold), but this solution is not comprehensive enough to meet your legal obligations. Remember, if a user is deleted, their mail, SharePoint and OneDrive contents are also deleted and may not be recoverable.
Maintaining a separate Office 365 backup removes ambiguity and risk, ensuring your data is always available when required.
6 – Managing hybrid email deployments and migrations to Office 365
Typically only new start-ups have the luxury of adopting Exchange 365 from the outset. Most businesses migrate from an on-premise email solution to the cloud at a later date – and many still retain some services on-premise.
Adopting a third-party Office 365 backup service like Secure Cloud Backup for Office 365 from WTL offers additional flexibility, allowing you to backup and restore emails from a hybrid environment quickly and transparently. This ensures that no matter where your data is located, it is always recoverable.
Get help today
Leaving your Office 365 data backup to Microsoft is a significant business risk. The built-in recovery service is adequate for a file or two, but it is not suitably comprehensive to properly protect your business and its data assets – what happens if a deletion is only discovered 31 days after the incident?
Fortunately, WTL has you covered, contact us today to discuss our fast, reliable, cost-effective Secure Cloud Backup for Office 365 solution and discover how to properly protect your emails and data.