5 Reasons Why You Should Start Making Backups of Your Office 365 Data
Office 365 is a superb business solution used by small and medium enterprises, as well as large companies with hundreds (or even thousands) of employees. The Microsoft 365 suite brings easier access for collaboration between business teams and individuals of like-minds – providing them with a suite of handy apps for various types of business activities.
Due to the various data shared across Office 365 apps, it is important to make office backups so as to not lose those important data and files. Data backups remain one of the surest data protection practices to have a place to fall back on whenever there’s an attack or human errors on the primary database storage.
There are pretty many reasons to back up the data you share across MS Office 365 apps, and in this article, we’d explain five of the most important ones you need to know. When making office backups, it is more recommendable and flexible to use third-party solutions like SpinOne.
5 Reasons To Start Making Backups of Your Office 365 Data
1. Office 365 Data is Prone to User Errors
Mistaken deletion is the most common human error faced by Microsoft 365 users. A user may mistakenly delete an important file while trying to navigate some folders or clear some space. This mistake is not only relatable with regular users of the suite – even admins can mistakenly delete data from the Office 365 suite.
In most cases, these users or admins may not even know that they deleted these files until there’s a need to work on them and no one can seem to find them. Yes, Microsoft 365 has a “Trash” folder where deleted files are stored for a couple of weeks before being permanently erased; once erased, it’s practically impossible to get those files except if you had external backups.
That said, it is important to enable third-party Microsoft Office 365 suite backups to be on the safe side when faced with a similar situation, as explained above. External backups are more easily accessible and fast to restore in cases of accidental deletion by the O365 users or administrators.
2. Microsoft Retention Policy is Not Failsafe for Big Companies
Of course, Microsoft offers a backup and restore solution for its Office 365 users, but the policy behind this feature is not flexible enough for most companies. In today’s fast-paced business world, organizations need lightning-speed access to solutions in case of any threat attack or data security breach.
Microsoft’s Office 365 offers limited data backup and retention policies, which is not reliable enough to cover you in most data loss scenarios. The only way to achieve an abrupt response to Office 365 data loss is to have external backups, void of these policies and easily accessible. There are many good apps that allow you to make Microsoft 365 backups swiftly and timely.
Most of these third-party backup solutions allow point-in-time restoration, which means you can roll back the backup to a particular time – probably some hours before the unprecedented data loss incident.
3. Security Threats
One of the challenges faced by businesses across the globe is security threats. These threats may be internal or external. Yes, businesses suffer from internal threats too, and as such, you should always have an external backup of your crucial files and data that are the bedrock of your organization.
External threats may include malware attacks, phishing attempts, and hackers trying to breach your company’s database sets to lay hold on customers’ private information, which can sell or use to perpetuate fraudulent activities. When you have an external backup, even if the core system gets attacked by a virus, you will have access to the important files and data that make your business move forward.
Furthermore, while making external backups may save you from security threats, it is important that you train your staff to be aware of potential security threats to businesses and how they can protect against such scenarios. Regular training of your staff may help reduce internal threats to some extent.
4. To Satisfy Legal Requirements
Every business is expected to meet certain requirements to keep functioning. These requirements are overseen by top governmental and non-governmental bodies. One of the compliance requirements with eDiscovery is that a company must integrate solutions that protect them against accidental deletions and a data recovery solution that is quickly accessible.
Going with the native Office 365 backup and restore feature isn’t a bad idea, but when it’s time to recover your data, it’s quite tedious, time-consuming, and may warrant end-user disruption. Unless you’re on any of the highest-priced enterprise plans, your best bet would be to make third-party backups.
5. To be on a Safe Side after Layoffs
At some point, companies may want to layoffs a number of their staff members for quite many reasons. Some of these laid-out staff may angrily tamper with any crucial data they have access to, which could cause serious damage or downtime to your business.
One of the ways to checkmate this type of scenario is by making external backups. So, even if your employees tamper with the internal data, you can get it back 100% from the external backup since Microsoft’s disaster recovery policy isn’t that much flexible.
What More?
These are some top reasons why you should start making backups of the data and files shared across your Office 365 business suite. External backups can come in handy in various situations to grant you easy and quick access to your important data in any scenario.
