One of the biggest misconceptions we encounter with Brisbane businesses is the belief that Microsoft handles all their data backup. After all, it is in the cloud, so it must be safe. The reality is more nuanced, and the gap between what business owners assume and what Microsoft actually guarantees can be costly.
What Microsoft 365 Actually Protects
Microsoft guarantees infrastructure uptime and redundancy. Their data centres are resilient, and they protect against hardware failure on their end. This is their responsibility under the shared responsibility model.
What they do not protect against is your data being accidentally deleted by a user, maliciously wiped by a disgruntled employee, corrupted by ransomware, or lost due to a misconfigured retention policy. That is your responsibility.
The Retention Policy Trap
Microsoft 365 has built-in retention policies, but they are not the same as a backup. Deleted items sit in the recycle bin for a limited time, typically 93 days for SharePoint and OneDrive. After that, they are gone permanently.
If you discover that a critical file was deleted four months ago, or that an entire mailbox was wiped during an employee exit, Microsoft cannot help you recover it.
Ransomware and Microsoft 365
Ransomware can encrypt files synced to OneDrive and SharePoint just as easily as local files. If a user's device is compromised and their synced files are encrypted, those encrypted versions propagate to the cloud. Version history can help in some cases, but it is not a reliable recovery strategy for a full-scale attack.
What a Proper M365 Backup Looks Like
A dedicated Microsoft 365 backup solution takes independent snapshots of your email, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams data. These snapshots are stored separately from your Microsoft tenant, so even if your entire M365 environment is compromised, your backup remains safe.
Restores can be granular, recovering a single email, a specific file version, or an entire mailbox. For most Brisbane businesses, the cost is a few dollars per user per month. Compared to the cost of losing critical business data, it is a straightforward decision.
Want to know if your Microsoft 365 data is properly protected? Our IT Health Check covers cloud backup gaps.
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