Why it’s important to back up your data even if it’s in the Cloud

If your business uses Microsoft 365 services, then you’re probably aware that your data is held in a secure environment in the Cloud. It is held there for you permanently – so why would you need to back it up?

The answer is that it is only held permanently as long as it isn’t deleted!

Consider the following scenarios:

  • A user within your business accidentally deletes files, or deletes them believing they are no longer required when in fact, they are.
  • Documents are inadvertently overwritten.
  • You delete the account of an ex-employee, then discover that their One Drive contained information that you need.
  • A disgruntled employee deliberately deletes data.
  • Your business falls victim to a ransomware attack and access to your data is compromised. There is no guarantee that you will get the data back, even if you pay the ransom.
  • You are required – for legal or compliance reasons – to produce information that you thought you no longer needed, and had therefore deleted.

In some situations it may be possible to retrieve a deleted item, especially if the deletion has happened within the last 90 days. However, that is not always possible and certainly if the event was longer ago than that, then recovery is not an option.

The good news is that you can protect your business against such risks, with a service that takes a snapshot of your Microsoft 365 environment and backs it up to an additional cloud service. Your files, mail, calendars and contacts are backed up at intervals during each day and the highest levels of security are applied, with data being encrypted at rest and in transit.

In the event of something being deleted, you simply go to the last backup before the deletion and recover the lost items. You can either recover your whole database, or just specific items. Robust search filters make it easy to locate the files and folder you need, quickly.

If you would like to know more about protecting your data in this way, please give us a call or complete our contact form here.