In a recent study, over 1,000 IT professionals were asked what forms of data loss they had experienced in the cloud. It emerged that user error/ accidental deletion, security threats, and retention gaps all made the list, from 18% to as high as 37%.
The stuff of nightmares
In a recent study, over 1,000 IT professionals were asked what forms of data loss they had experienced in the cloud. It emerged that user error/ accidental deletion, security threats, and retention gaps all made the list, from 18% to as high as 37%.
And what about you? Do you have access to and control over your backup?
Which begs the question – do you have control of your Office 365 data? If your answer is that “Microsoft is taking care of it all”, think again. 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. However, it is even more important that you have direct access to and control over that backup. So if data is lost, accidentally deleted, or maliciously attacked, for example, you can quickly recover. Geo redundancy, on the other hand, protects against site or hardware failure, so if there is an infrastructure crash or outage, your users will remain productive and often oblivious to these underlying issues.
Ultimately, you need to ensure you have access to, and control over, your Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Microsoft Teams data.
You need to backup Office 365 today – and here’s why
Here’s why you need to ensure that you need to have a backup solution for Microsoft Office 365, and fill the gap of long-term retention and data protection.
Accidental deletion – If you delete a user, whether you meant to or not, that deletion is replicated across the network, along with the deletion of their OneDrive for Business account and mailbox.
Retention policy gaps and confusion – 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.
Internal security threats – Organisations 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.
External security threats – Malware and viruses, like ransomware, have done serious damage to organisations across the globe. Exchange Online’s limited backup/recovery functions are inadequate to handle serious attacks.
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 of safety nets (litigation hold and retention). However, these are not a robust backup solution that will keep your company out of legal trouble.
Managing hybrid email deployments and migrations to Office 365 – Organisations that adopt Office 365 typically need a transition window between on-premises Exchange and Office 365 Exchange Online. These hybrid email deployments are common, yet pose additional management challenges. An effective Office 365 backup solution is required to handle hybrid email deployments, and treat exchange data the same, making the source location irrelevant.
Teams data structure – Microsoft Teams has settings, configurations, and membership which all need to be protected and kept recoverable. A purpose-built backup solution can protect not only the data but also these settings and their associated interconnections between applications.
For your peace of mind, and all the other reasons mentioned above …
Hopefully, this article has made you take a closer look at security gaps and data loss risks you may not have been aware of before. You already made a smart business decision by deploying Microsoft Office 365; now find a backup solution that offers you both complete access to and complete control over your Office 365 data, before it’s too late.
For expert advice on how to have the optimal backup for your Office 365 set-up, contact our Smart Technologies experts on the subject via email at sales@stl.mt.com