7 Reasons Why You Need a Separate M365 Backup Strategy

Why do I need a separate backup strategy?

There's a commonly held misconception by IT professionals that cloud services such as  Microsoft O365 services do not require a separate backup strategy. This can lead to business critical data being compromised.

But making the assumption that a SaaS vendor like Microsoft has taken care of your backup is a dangerous assumption. This is particularly the case when data has been deleted, which can go unnoticed for some time.

Here's our seven reasons why you need a separate backup strategy;

Avoid Dependency

Being wholly dependent on a single cloud vendor is a dangerous mistake for a business to make. Without control of their own data, businesses will struggle to react fast enough in the event of an issue becoming apparent.

Even if the data can be retrieved the process itself can become part of the problem with long and complicated retrieval process and the added problem of a potentially destructive all-or-nothing restore.

Setting Your Own Retention Policy

O365 never was intended to be a complete and all-encompassing backup solution. If data has fallen outside of the standard retention policy periods, O365 may have deleted this forever and recovery can become a real headache.

You can avoid this with a data management service that allows you to set your own retention policies very easily and whose sole purpose is to ensure that your data can be recovered directly back to Office 365, regardless of the state of your live data.

Address Compliance Issues

Are you confident that when your employees leave the company you can prevent them taking files and potentially private business data with them?

Recover Everything in the Event of Deletion

So what happens if a user accidentally or even worse, intentionally deletes or overwrites files?

Recycle bins and version histories in Office 365 provide only limited protection.

If you delete a user, whether you meant to or not, that deletion is replicated across the network. Once an item is purged from the mailbox database, it is unrecoverable. This could have far-reaching effects if a rogue employee decided to delete incriminating emails or files.

O365 provides only limited protection for recycle bins and version histories. Deletions, whether on purpose or accidental are replicated across the network and once an item is purged from the mailbox database, it is unrecoverable. This can have far-reaching effects if an employee makes the decision to delete incriminating emails or files, leaving your business with no evidence against them.

Microsoft’s backup and retention policies can only protect you from data loss up to a certain point, and can’t take the place of third-party data management solutions.

Prevent Delays Due to Data Loss

Loss of data quite simply can mean loss of both time and money to your business. 

Microsoft provides exceptional availability and cannot be expected to focus elsewhere on extended retention or old user data. If your business is solely reliant on Microsoft as a means of backup, utilising Microsoft Support for recovery can be extremely time consuming.

The best way to avoid an issue impacting severely on business continuity is to find a third party that offers streamed, on-demand access to data at a moment’s notice.

Protection Against Ransomware Attacks

Microsoft explicitly states that point-in-time restores of data are not in the scope of the Exchange service. 

So how can businesses protect themselves from ransomware attacks, misconfigured workflows or, third-party app outages or malfunctions?

By regularly backing up your data you will ensure a seperate copy of your uninfected data is always available and that you can quickly recover mailboxes to an instance before the attack.

Your data management provider should be able to offer streamed, on-demand instant access to all your data, keeping your business running no matter what.

Separate Rolls as Security Standard

Companies nowadays require a separation of roles as a security standard.

If your backup solution is the platform itself that this provides a single point of failure. Meaning your data could be lost forever.

There is the potential for anyone with O365 administrator rights to assign themselves full export and search access for Exchange mailboxes, OneDrive locations and Sharepoint folders.

With this comes the ability to delete files, emails and data which without a third-party backup may become irretrievable if outside of Microsoft's retention policy.

Ready for True cloud-to-cloud protection?

With a third-party backup strategy from Redstor you can be confident in business continuity for every eventuality.

Enjoy a unified view of all data whether in Teams, Cloud, On-prem or in a hybrid environment, keeping your data safe and accessible at all times.

Gain borderless visibility of your entire data estate at any time, on any device. Our web-based control centre gives you a centralised view of multiple sites, wherever you are