We love this article by one of our partners, HostedBizz, talking about why businesses need to protect 0365 Data, so arranged to share it with you. HostedBizz specializes in helping companies migrate from on premises systems to the cloud – and there is nothing they haven’t encountered and resolved in the many years they’ve been doing it (and that migration has been going on longer than you might imagine!).
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There is often a misunderstanding between Microsoft’s perceived responsibility and the user’s actual responsibility for protection and maintaining long-term retention of your Office 365 data.
Microsoft Office 365 offers geo-redundancy, which is often mistaken for backup. Backup takes place when a historical copy of data is made and then stored in another location. It is important that you have direct access to and control over your backup so if data is lost, accidentally deleted or maliciously attacked, you can quickly recover. Geo-redundancy protects against site or hardware failure but does not backup your data and does not mitigate the risk of losing access to all your cloud data and does not provide comprehensive protection and immediate access and availability to all your Office 365 data.
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7 REASONS WHY BACKING UP OFFICE 365 IS CRITICAL
- Accidental Deletion
In Office 365, if you delete a user, whether you meant to or not, that deletion is replicated across the network, along with the deletion of their personal SharePoint site and their OneDrive data. This means that Office 365 has geo-redundantly deleted the data forever.
There are two types of deletions in Office 365, soft delete and hard delete. An example of soft delete is emptying the Deleted Items folder. It is also referred to as “Permanently Deleted.” In this case, permanent is not completely permanent, as the item can still be found in the Recoverable Items mailbox. A hard delete is when an item is tagged to be purged from the mailbox database completely. Once this happens, it is unrecoverable, period.
- Retention Policy Gaps and Confusion
The digital age lends itself to continuously evolving policies that are difficult to keep up with, let alone manage. Just like hard and soft delete, Office 365 has limited backup and retention policies that can only fend off situational data loss, and is not intended to be an all-encompassing backup solution.
In the case of a catastrophic issue, a backup solution can provide the ability to roll back to a previous point-in-time prior to this issue and saving the day, but unfortunately this is not in scope with Microsoft Office 365.
With the HostedBizz Office 365 backup solution, there are no retention policy gaps or restore inflexibility. Short term backups or long-term archives, granular or point-in-time restores, everything is at your fingertips making your data recovery fast, easy and reliable.
- Internal Security Threats
Businesses experience threats from the inside, and they are happening more often than you think. Organizations fall victim to threats posed by their very own employees, both intentionally and unintentionally.
Microsoft has no way of knowing the difference between a regular user and a terminated employee attempting to delete critical company data before they depart. In addition, some users unknowingly create serious threats by downloading infected files or accidentally leaking usernames and passwords to sites they thought they could trust.
Another example is evidence tampering. Imagine an employee strategically deleting incriminating emails or files — keeping these objects out of the reach of the legal, compliance or HR departments.
- External Security Threats
Malware and viruses, like ransomware, have done serious damage to organizations across the globe. Not only is company reputation at risk, but the privacy and security of internal and customer data is also at risk.
External threats can sneak in through emails and attachments, and it isn’t always enough to educate users on what to look out for — especially when the infected messages seem so compelling.
Exchange Online’s limited backup/recovery functions aren’t able to handle serious attacks. Regular HostedBizz O365 backups will help ensure a separate copy of your data is uninfected and quickly recoverable.
- Legal and Compliance Requirements
Sometimes you need to unexpectedly retrieve emails, files or other types of data amid legal action. Microsoft has built in a couple safety nets, (Litigation Hold) but again, these are not a robust backup solution capable of keeping your company out of legal trouble. For example, if you accidentally delete a user, their on-hold mailbox, personal SharePoint site and OneDrive account is also deleted.
Legal requirements, compliance requirements and access regulations vary between industries, but all are subject to fines, penalties and legal disputes no matter the industry.
- Managing Hybrid Email Deployments and Migration to Office 365
Organizations that adopt Office 365 typically need a window of time to serve as a transition between on-premises Exchange and Office 365 Exchange Online. These hybrid email deployments are common, yet pose additional management challenges.
The HostedBizz Office 365 backup solution is able to handle hybrid email deployments, and treat exchange data the same, making the source location irrelevant.
- Teams Data Structure
Microsoft structures Teams as a user interface that brings together Office 365 services, such as SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. Teams has settings, configurations, and membership which all need to be protected and recoverable. A purpose-built backup solution can protect not only the data but also these settings and the associated interconnections between applications.
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To ensure that all Office 365 data is protected is recommended that Veeam backup be used. Veeam is another of our valued partners.
To learn more about migrating to the cloud or backing up your Office 365, please contact us at [email protected] or (416) 429-0796 or 1.877.238.9944 (Toll Free).
