Cloud storage for Documents is of course becoming the sensible way to store your files as it gives you and your team incredible flexibility.

Storing your company data in the Cloud allows you to access data seamlessly across your devices and across the world.

So it probably won’t surprise you when I tell you how often we hear from a client that “Google Drive/iCloud/OneDrive/Sharepoint are backed up in the Cloud”!

And we have to find a gentle yet honest way of informing them, it’s just simply not. Unfortunately as great as these storage methods are they are not a “backup”.

Microsoft 365 offers very basic protection from data loss, firstly while Microsoft does of course replicate your data across their data centers in the event of data loss at one of their data centers that won’t protect against corruption from a Ransomware attack your end for instance, thus leaving encrypted data spread across Microsoft’s data centers. Now Microsoft does offer limited retention for deleted files and previous versions which may protect you from a Ransomware attack, but the restore might be time intensive and quite a bit more work if you don’t have a third-party dedicated backup tool.

All your data should be protected by the 3-2-1 rule of backups.
Three copies of your data on two different pieces of media, one of which should be offsite.

Therefore relying upon on Microsoft 365 to protect itself violates every one of the above backup rules. Microsoft 365 protections are built into Microsoft 365.  App data should always be protected by something that isn’t the app.

And… even Microsoft agrees. See this from their Microsoft 365 Service Agreement

Assume you accidentally or deliberately delete an email, OneDrive file, or SharePoint item, Microsoft 365 allows you to retrieve this for a small period of time.

You need to realise within this time you deleted the item (if it was an accident), locate the deleted item in the relevant Recycle Bin folder before it expires (and also hope the recycle bin emptied by an admin – bad actor or otherwise).

If it is a malicious attack and ransomware deletes hundreds or thousands of files, you will be spending quite a lot of time locating files and restoring, a process referred to as “dumpster diving,” which no one should use as their backup method.

A dedicated backup tool allows you to not only dellegate the recovery to us saving you valuable time but also easily find and restore as many files as you need, or even restore an entire user or folder to a point in time. One step, instead of thousands of them.

If you’d like to discuss protecting your Microsoft 365 / OneDrive / Sharepoint or just using Microsoft 365 for remote working get in touch.