Why a Backup Strategy for Microsoft Office 365 is Essential for Security, Compliance, and Business Continuity.

Regardless of whether the data is on-premise on a physical server in your office or in the cloud infrastructure such as Office 365, ultimate responsibility of data protection lies with the customer or the data owner — you.

Adopting Office 365 without enterprise-grade backup is a risky strategy. The costs to get protected are lower than ever and our service includes both Email and OneDrive data.

Given Microsoft’s responsibility and supporting technology is limited to infrastructure levels, organizations are exposing themselves to the following risks if they are without third-party backup
plans:

1. Data loss and security breaches. O365 is no exception to security breaches — it is vulnerable to internal threats (e.g., accidental deletion of data, actions by disgruntled employees, or access from ex-employees) as well as external threats (e.g., malware or ransomware).
2. According to IDC research in 2018, 69% of organizations have suffered successful malware attacks within 12 months, 39% of which involved ransomware. Malware attacks are a reality today. Almost half (49%) of organizations have suffered from an unrecoverable data event in the past three years. An enterprise-grade backup strategy can give enterprises an option to recover from security breaches by using granular recovery.
3. Retention and regulatory compliance exposures. Microsoft offers a 90-day retention policy that does not meet the more stringent data retention regulations for certain industries such as financial services, healthcare, retail, and government. Having a third-party backup can help organizations set their own retention policies according to their business needs and remain compliant with European data regulations.
4. Lack of data control in hybrid deployments. Full oversight and control of data is a boardroom priority and a first step toward becoming data-driven. Without backup, organizations do not have an exit strategy or freedom from SaaS lock-in because they are not in complete control of their data.