Cloud to Cloud Office 365 Backup: Why It Is Important
4 min readThe business’ reliance on Microsoft Office 365 cloud service is growing every year. This solution covers a lot of company needs. from small to medium businesses to enterprises. Even when most of the world is working remotely, it provides all necessary functionality for comfortable performance of everyday tasks.
As more people rely on Microsoft 365 solutions, the importance of data protection becomes more and more greater. As a part of the shared responsibility model, Microsoft mostly cares about their physical data centers, availability of the data and authentication measures. Basically, it is a responsibility of the data owner to keep their data stored and secured and this is where cloud-to-cloud Office 365 backup steps in.
While someone may think that their sensitive information is protected just by being in Microsoft’s cloud, there are some bad news about it. Native Microsoft’s recovery policies have some limitations that don’t match with many business needs. So let’s take a look at key benefits of Office 365 backup.
Data deletion issues and recovery limitation
Human mistake is something that affects everyone from time to time. Users can accidentally delete a big amount of emails with the one they will need much later than retention policy will allow them to. Also, it could be a former employee who cleaned his desk and deleted everything from his working PC. You can realize that you needed something from his personal files on OneDrive too late. It is good to know that the longest retention time for deleted items recovery that Microsoft can offer is 90 days (in the most expensive Microsoft 365 Enterprise license) and it may not be exactly the time frame your business retention policy needs.
This is the most obvious reason why your organization would need a comprehensive cloud solution with automated backup and version management. Such features may be useful for some departments that work heavily with documents and data loss may be crucial for their work processes. Implementing a cloud backup solution will help to keep everything under control and avoid losing any important files.
Cybercriminals attacks, phishing and more
Phishing attacks and malwares are the kind of threats that become more and more critical every year. Especially now, in the remote rok era of COVID-19 pandemic, cybercriminals pretend to represent legal organizations that collect donations for hospitals, health centers, social help or else. The methods that cybercriminals use are based on cheating users and forcing them to click on malicious links to initiate hidden download of software infected with ransomware or trojans. Also, cybercriminals can collect your login or payment details, that is a common trick.
In case if you have no intention to pay ransom for your infected databases, a cloud backup software should allow you to quickly restore your system to the most recent version before it was damaged. It saves a lot of money and time, allowing you to restore the most vital business processes immediately. Again, this is a big benefit of active version management and regular automated backup. While it is hard to prevent cyberattack itself, it is not that hard to recover from it.
Compliance requirements and data policies.
Every business that is tied to work with data has to follow some policies like GDPR. In a nutshell, such things allow users to better regulate their data usage and obliges the companies to implement certain data security measures. Some data can also become a subject of litigation hold. In this case, it is good to be prepared in advance and all appropriate info should be retained. Most industry requirements about data security are going far beyond what Microsoft offers even in their licenses. The most weak point is of course limited retention policy which is critical to sensitive info storing.
So, if you need to have a deal with some strict policies or litigation hold, you can always apply for Microsoft 635 Enterprise license. It provides data protection for litigation hold directly from Microsoft. Of course, it can be quite expensive and small-to-medium businesses may not need the full range of features and functionality that Enterprise subscription offers. In this case, your option will be a third party backup solution that usually offers a more reasonable price and ensures that you need all the requirements for security compliance policies or litigation hold.
Migration and offboarding
The worst news about storing your data in Microsoft’s cloud service is to know that once a user’s account is deleted, all emails and documents connected to it are deleted as well for the entire network. When you delete the Microsoft 365 license of your former employee and then suddenly realize after a few months that there was an important document on that account that your customer needs now, it can be a painful disadvantage for Microsoft’s disadvantage.
Same goes for migration processes. The Data Migration Tool from Google has a very limited functionality that allows you two transfer only two types of data (emails and contacts) and only one type at a time. If something was lost during this process and your old Office 365 accounts have been already deleted for some time, it is gone forever. At this point, a backup solution with such features as migration tool and retention of old Office 365 accounts can be quite useful for any business owner.
These are four common (but not the only) reasons why you should start considering an implementation of cloud backup right now. Usage of a third party’s cloud backup solution will cover such questions of yours like how to backup Office 365 data, how to make it always accessible and manageable and what to do when something goes wrong with your documentation. Take your time to investigate your business needs concerning data storing and security, choose an appropriate solution and one day you’ll be grateful for this decision.
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