What Do We Need To Know About Backing Up Our Microsoft Office 365 Data?
Many businesses rely on Microsoft Office 365. It’s a great solution for all types of organizations. But some are confused about how their Office 365 data should be backed up. Some believe that data created and stored in O 365 doesn’t need to be backed up beyond what Microsoft does. However, this isn’t true. It’s best to have your IT provider set up an Enterprise Cloud Backup for Microsoft Office 365.
Won’t Microsoft Back Up Our Office 365 Data Correctly?
Yes, but Microsoft considers this a shared responsibility. They offer very basic protection if something damages your data. But you shouldn’t count on it alone.
Microsoft may host the infrastructure for Office 365, but this doesn’t mean you don’t have to maintain a backup of your data. Your data in the Cloud is your obligation to set up, back up, recover, etc. It’s not Microsoft’s obligation to do this.
Microsoft Office 365 preserves and retains many types of incoming, internal and outgoing data including:
- Inbound and outbound email communications.
- Books and records contained in email form or in shared online documents.
- Meeting requests.
- Faxes.
- Instant messages.
- Documents shared during online meetings.
- Voicemails.
With an active subscription, you can access, extract, or delete data stored in Office 365. If your subscription ends or is terminated, Microsoft will retain data stored in Office 365 in a limited-function account for 90 days so you can extract your data. More than 180 days after your subscription expires, Microsoft will disable your account and delete all your data from the account. At this point, you won’t be able to recover it.
Is Data Protected & Recoverable When It’s Backed Up In Office 365?
Microsoft provides only basic protection for things that could damage your data. Even if you believe that your network is well protected, the restore from your backup might be time intensive and not totally recoverable. If your organization must meet regulatory compliance, internal governance requirements, or if litigation risk requires the preservation of email and associated data in a discoverable form, you should speak to your IT company about a third-party solution to provide for this.
What Happens If We Don’t Back Up Our Office 365?
Accidents happen that could result in lost data. Microsoft Office 365 is improving all the time to help prevent data loss from accidents and cyber threats. However, unless your Office 365 data is backed up:
- Administrators could purge your data when they shouldn’t.
- Hackers could gain access to an administrative account.
- Ransomware could encrypt your documents stored in SharePoint and OneDrive for Business.
- Outlook emails are only backed up for 30 days. What if you need to access those older than this?
What Regulations Require Email To Be Backed Up?
If you work in a regulated industry like healthcare, law or finance, you likely have strict backup requirements. You must be able to access your data and keep complete and accurate records of files, emails, attachments and related data. HIPAA, GDPR and other regulations require that you can do this for many years. Office 365 backup is limited and doesn’t guarantee that you’ll meet these requirements.
It’s important to back up Office 365 email data back to your controlled environment to also meet internal compliance requirements and policies that follow the 3-2-1 Rule of backup. You must maintain control of your company data, and you need a full and comprehensive backup and recovery for Office 365 that’s within easy reach.
What Do We Need To Do To Back Up Our Office 365 Data?
You shouldn’t back up Office 365 data on your own. It’s best if your IT provider helps you with this. Look for an IT provider who offers an Armada Enterprise Cloud Backup For Microsoft Office 365. This mitigates the risk of losing access to Office 365 and Exchange Online data and ensures the availability of data for your users, allowing you to remain in control.
This will allow you to easily schedule point-in-time backups of corporate data and mailboxes from Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint Online. And, because no limitations are imposed on the number of mailboxes or data size, the platform is easily scalable to meet the needs of your organization.
The Cloud Management Console in the web-based user interface makes the Armada Enterprise Cloud Backup For Microsoft Office 365 easy to deploy. Backup frequencies can be adjusted to best meet your established business needs – hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. As users are added, they are detected automatically, making it easy to select individuals, or all users to be added to a backup schedule. All data that is backed up is compressed, deduplicated, encrypted and stored in a secure managed private cloud, public cloud or hybrid cloud environment.
The most important reason to have your IT service company use an Armada Enterprise Cloud Backup For Microsoft Office 365? The peace-of-mind that comes from knowing you’ll be able to restore your users’ data when needed, without delay, and without additional cost.
