If you are looking for a backup option for Microsoft 365, then you may not find one. Why? Because it simply does not exist. Does that mean that you need to use a personal office 365 data backup? If you ask this question to experts then you are likely to get a wide range of answers.
The general perception of people when migrating their business mechanisms to the cloud of Microsoft 365 is that they absolutely do not need to prepare for a backup. The reason why is that they believe that Microsoft will handle all the data and protect all information that users store in their cloud.
To an extent, this perception is true. Microsoft 365 does in fact handle the backup and protect the infrastructure that they use to provide their services. Nonetheless, they have little to no protection when it comes to user-level data.
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To find out how you can benefit from the backups, you need to first consider what you will use those backups for. Below, the article will discuss five situations in backups that can come in handy.
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Reverting Data
People will often rely on Microsoft 365 backup to revert their data back to a previous point. The reason why you would want to do this can be to undo a mistake. Other times, you would like to do this so that you can see what a document looks like before you make the changes.
Nonetheless, it is important to note that Microsoft 365 allows the user to benefit from version history. This is a feature that end-users can access to record each change made to a document as a separate version. Users can therefore easily browse through each version and revert if they need to.
There are, however, some limitations to this option, as it is only applicable to SharePoint. Not to mention, it also creates a limited number of versions and it doesn’t work for deleted files. It also requires the user to enable it for a particular document.
Hence, it is a usable and accessible feature that allows you to roll back documents to previous documents to track all changes. However, it is not a compliance solution, and will not help you recover the data that has been lost. This is why you may need to look for other solutions when backing up office 365.
Accidental Data Loss
Recovering from accidental loss of data can present a challenge. If something gets deleted or overwritten, there are many useful in-built features of office 365 that can help. Deleted item retention and SharePoint’s recycle bin are two excellent options. With the help of these features, you can access the deletions of the past and undo them.
Not to mention, different industries, businesses, and communities have different requirements for retention policies. Most of the office 365 plans have a very limited retention span. This means that users cannot integrate an unlimited or a higher range of retention periods.
Nonetheless, there are limits to how far back you can go, and this limit varies between different services. If you are an admin, you can access the codes and enable the retention policies. These effectively prevent anyone from deleting any data when a change is made.
This helps recover data loss that occurs due to user mistakes. However, it is not a perfect solution. The better option will always be to store a separate copy of the data on a third-party source. Fortunately, users have the option to use third-party compliance programs that not only backs up all the data but also restore all files.
Malware Prevention
Even if you are organized and careful with your data, it does not mean that it is not vulnerable to malicious viruses. Amongst all the different situations that can lead to data loss, this is the most dangerous, uncontrollable, and hard to recover from.
If someone has targeted your data, they will also ensure that you are not able to recover it after they have made the attack. Furthermore, if one of your admin accounts is compromised, there is not much you can do.
Even if you enable retention policies, the perpetrators will just turn it off and purge the data regardless. Thus, to avoid compromising crucial and costly data in the hands of hackers, you must backup office data so that you do not end up in a helpless situation.
You also need to consider that employees leave and join companies. Whenever an employee leaves a company, there is always the possible risk of bad blood. This means that they may intentionally harm the business by deleting or corrupting the data.
Data Corruption
Data corruption is a very realistic scenario and happens rather commonly even in office 365. This means that your data can undergo damage or corruption even if it is not your fault. Microsoft helps its users recover from this data loss with catastrophic corruption. Your data exists in multiple replicas, and they replicate using different transactions.
Therefore, they flip over to different replicas when the data becomes corrupt. This method is useful, but it does not prevent small-scale data corruption from damaging individual files. For this reason, the better option would be to backup data and not have to worry about Microsoft policies.
Physical Failure
Even if you have a comprehensive recovery plan in place, this does mean that you are safe from the risks of physical failure. Therefore, a data backup setup will help you rid yourself of the worries of unwanted physical malfunction that leads to data loss.
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To Conclude
If you place plenty of value on your office 365 backup data, and cannot afford to compromise it at any cost, then it is advisable that you resort to different backup solutions for Microsoft office. If you don’t do it, then you are essentially accepting some level of risk that could result in data loss.
