7 Reasons to Backup Microsoft 365 Data
Businesses are increasingly turning to cloud services. Cloud services can make things more convenient for businesses by shifting maintenance to the vendors, reducing costs compared to purchasing on-premises hardware but more importantly for our clients, ease-of-use with access anytime and anywhere to company data.
As a Microsoft Partner our go to Cloud service for emails, data storage and intranets must be the Microsoft 365 offering with their Exchange Online, OneDrive and SharePoint products. However, when it comes to the retention and recoverability of Office 365 data, serious consideration should be had to supplement this solution.
As an MSP Konnetix are your trusted advisor. Here to keep your staff productive and provide sound strategic IT decisions for your business and therefore it is important for us to take that extra step to protect your data.
Here are 7 reasons why you should back up your Microsoft 365 data and why Microsoft 365 is not enough on its own.
- Accidental Deletion
This happens. Users from time to time accidentally delete folders with critical documents within it. This could occur for any number of reasons—the person does not realise the contents within a folder, or they may have nested their folders. Perhaps on Microsoft 365 email, they decide to delete old emails to save space not realising one day they will need critical information from months or even years before.
By default, the Microsoft recycle bin deletes once every 14 days, although we as the administrator can set it to 30 days. If someone deletes information and it is not caught quickly, you may be unable to retrieve the information. Having a supplemental backup in place can help you prevent these issues and save you from huge problems down the line.
- Retention Gaps
Microsoft retains email data if a user account is active. But you do not want to continue paying for a subscription after an employee leaves or is let go. This could lead to you losing important information or intellectual property stored within email. Of course, you can always share mailboxes before an employee leaves, however, this can get complicated as it relies on communication that an employee is leaving and is prone to error.
Why take a chance? Our go to solution SolarWinds® Backup retains Microsoft 365 Exchange data for up to seven years, so you do not have to worry about missing data when an employee walks out the door.
- Insider Threats
Unfortunately, this is a real concern. We all want to assume people have the best of intentions and most employees are on the level. However, sometimes, even some good employees can cause harm for any number of reasons. Should an employee decide to delete data intentionally and quietly wait out the 14 or 30-day retention period, that data will be unrecoverable. Sabotage may be rare, but it is a risk you should account for. With a secondary backup in place, you can help prevent this risk from becoming a reality.
- External Threats
Of course, malicious insiders are not the only threat—outsider threats are common in today’s age of hacking. In particular, weak passwords could lead to real challenges; for example, your staff may reuse passwords across multiple accounts and systems. If they use a username and password combination that has been breached before, then criminals may be able to find a match and break into an employee’s Microsoft 365 account and steal or delete data.
Cloud-based apps like Microsoft 365 are high-value targets for cybercriminals. Finding ways to take over user accounts or victimise users can be a lucrative goal for cybercriminals. Whether phishing attacks aimed to push malware or account takeovers via stolen or hacked credentials, cybercriminals increasingly target users of cloud services. For that reason, having a strong backup is crucial for protecting your company data.
- Legal and Compliance Reasons
Many compliance regulations set rules around the amount of time companies have to retain data. For example, the default standard retention period for companies in the United Kingdom (UK) performing Medical Research is 10 years.
- Customer Experience
We are responsible for providing an excellent experience for our customers. Users come to us to fix all things IT—we want to make sure we can provide that near one-stop shop as much as we can. By having an additional backup, we can offer you greater peace of mind.
Data loss can be catastrophic for businesses whether it is loss of customer information, financial data, or important intellectual property. By running a backup of Microsoft 365 Data, we offer greater reassurance that we will stand as not just your IT Support but business partner, ready to prevent data loss and its fallout.