A disclaimer right at the beginning
Let's start with a question: does anyone still want to worry about backing up and, even worse, restoring data? Very probably not.
Nevertheless, these topics are indispensable in today's business environment, in which we are practically 100% dependent on the availability of data. On the one hand, backing up and restoring user data is therefore indispensable and technically a matter of course. On the other hand, the increasing use of cloud or SaaS (software-as-a-service) services such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google Docs, without which it would be impossible to imagine our everyday working lives today, means that there is a clear trend towards the constant availability of data. Above all, this means that users expect that lost data can be restored more or less immediately.
What do the figures say?
Let's take a quick look at the figures for data volumes: IDC assumes that the amount of data created in 2023 will reach over 100 ZB (one trillion gigabytes) or ten times the amount of data created in 2014. (Source: IDC: The Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS) Market at a Glance).
And this is where an important point comes into play: not only many users of these services but also companies are - wrongly - of the opinion that the data used in SaaS applications is fundamentally protected by the provider of these services.
It must therefore be clearly stated: with online services such as Microsoft Office 365 the data belongs to you. You have control over it, but are therefore also responsible for protecting this data.
What Microsoft offers ...
As Microsoft is the default system in the business environment, we will focus on it in this article. Microsoft does indeed assume responsibility in many aspects and therefore also offers its customers very good services. However, the focus there is on managing the Office 365 infrastructure and ensuring the agreed service availability. Of course, this offers a whole range of advantages:
- the company's users have access to their data from anywhere and at any time,
- regardless of end devices, browsers or location,
- Companies do not need to set up their own infrastructure for services or applications such as mail servers or SharePoint,
- There are no discussions about updates,
- These systems have very high availability,
- However, the fact that Microsoft provides the infrastructure does not mean that backing up your business-critical Office 365 data is superfluous.
... and what not
In principle, Microsoft offers organisations rudimentary tools for protecting and restoring data stored in Office 365. By default, Microsoft Exchange Online, for example, stores deleted folders and files in the recycle bin for a period of fourteen days. Deleted emails and mailboxes are kept for 30 days. This means that the user can carry out a restore themselves within 30 days. After that, the data can only be restored by the admin if Office 365 E3 is in use. These costs for a more expensive subscription must always be taken into account in a backup project.
The exceptions here are SharePoint and OneDriveif these are taken into account in the retention policy. If this is the case, deleted data is removed from the recycle bin after 90 days. However, the storage space for litigation hold is included in the SharePoint storage. As this is limited, it should be avoided.
In principle, the same applies here for Teams as for SharePoint, as SharePoint is used here.
The options offered by Microsoft, for example, in terms of versioning and archiving can therefore certainly help to protect your files. For many reasons, which we will look at in a moment, it is nevertheless advisable to use specialised tools to back up your data in SaaS environments.
So why a product from a backup manufacturer?
Of course, you may now ask yourself: why should I rely on an external solution to set up a backup for Office 365 data? The native mechanisms are actually sufficient.
There are some Good reasonsfor example if
- a longer recovery time than 90 days is prescribed in the company,
- problems occur during transmission or synchronisation,
- incorrect or corrupt data that can possibly no longer be read,
- a ransomware attack occurs,
- individual files that are no longer in the recycle bin are to be recovered,
- there is deliberate manipulation by the user, such as wilful deletion of data,
- if you want to save your backup data locally or offline or across different locations, or
- companies want to determine the hedging date themselves.
IDC puts it like this:
"Regardless of whether the data is stored locally or in the cloud infrastructure or SaaS such as O365. The ultimate responsibility for data backup lies with the customer or the data owner - i.e. you. Using O365 without cross-company data backup is risky"
(Source: IDC: "Why a backup strategy for Microsoft Office 365 is essential - for IT security, compliance and business continuity")
Danger recognised, almost averted
It is therefore important to realise your own responsibility in this regard in order to prevent damage to your company. It is therefore essential that direct access to and control over such backups is guaranteed by the company - only then can lost data be restored quickly.
There is a large gap between the backup and recoverability guaranteed by Microsoft and what this actually brings the user. Therefore, the first step when using such services must be to clarify whether the standard functions in Office 365 provide the desired level of control.
Unfortunately, an estimated 76 % of the sensitive cloud data contained in Office documents is not protected by backups (source: Veeam customer survey, September 2019). IDC even assumes that six out of ten companies still do not back up their Office 365 data (IDC: "Why a backup strategy for Microsoft Office 365 is essential - for IT security, compliance and business continuity").
In addition to these considerations, which focus on the user, the company's data and the uninterrupted management of operations, factors such as risk management and legal requirements under the GDPR must of course also be taken into account.
A first interim result
To summarise, this is more than just a good reason to take the issue of backing up data in the cloud or SaaS applications such as Microsoft Office 365 into your own hands. It simply pays off.
At second element Let's take a closer look at the scenarios that speak in favour of using a dedicated backup software product, Microsoft Office 365.
As a partner of Veeam, ABAX is available to answer your questions on the topics of Data management, backup & restore and of course also the protection of your mobile employees of course would be very happy to help you.
