Various users ask queries regarding the best practices for Office 365 backup. In order to address such type’s queries, this how-to guide is crafted to let them know about the importance of backup along with the Microsoft Office 365 backup best practices.
Microsoft 365(Office 365) is a popular business productivity suite among organizations. Over a million companies worldwide use Office 365 to undertake day-to-day activities.
So, the question is, how does Microsoft take care of a huge amount of Office 365 data? Most importantly, does Microsoft backup your data? Let’s understand it deeply.
Table of Contents
Content Summary
Know the Shared Responsibility Model of Microsoft Office 365
5 Important Elements of Microsoft Office 365 Best Practices
Educate End Users
Deploy the 3-2-1 Strategy
Analyze Which Data Need to be Backed Up
Secure Your Data
Choose the Reliable Approach
Conclusion
As you consider and evaluate the cloud service, it’s critical to understand the shared responsibility model and which security tasks are handled by Microsoft & which tasks are handled by you.
- Microsoft takes the responsibility for the uptime of the cloud service. And, you have full access & control of your data residing in Office 365.
- In terms of supporting technology, Microsoft is responsible for Office 365 data replication. However, it’s your responsibility to save a copy of your data in a different location.
Note: The above statement clarifies that Microsoft doesn’t back up your data from its end.
- Microsoft provides only infrastructure-level security (physical, logical, App-level, User/Admin controls). On the other hand, you are in charge of data-level security (accidental deletion, malicious insiders, employee retaliation, malware attack, etc.).
- The tech giant presumably takes steps to prevent data loss related to a distressing failure within its data center, it doesn’t protect you from data loss related to the accidental deletion or overwriting of your data.
- At the end of the day, it’s you who is responsible for the backup and safety of your own data. Thus, it’s up to you to realize the importance of data backup and make sure that you have an extra copy of your Microsoft 365 data.
To help you with your data backup, below are some best practices for your reference.
5 Important Elements of Microsoft Office 365 Best Practices
Take the below five pillars into consideration and backup Office 365 data.
Educate End Users
Protecting important and sensitive Office 365 data should be the top priority of an organization. No company can ignore the cost of data loss. The cost includes financial impact, security expenses, PR expenses, brand value loss, reputational damage, and customer turnover. And it could break a business in a blink of an eye.
So, the 1st step toward protecting an organization’s data is to make the employees aware of the importance of data backup.
Make them realize that they are the security asset of the organization. Since they can access their Office 365 data from anywhere and on any device, it’s their duty not to lose any data. So, advise them to take back up their Office 365 data frequently.
It doesn’t end here. Checking up on them and ensuring that all the employees are on the same page i.e implementing the course of action is also critical.
Deploy the 3-2-1 Strategy
This is one of the vital parts of Office 365 backup best practices. And, it’s not hard to understand cause the explanation is in the heading itself.
To put it in a sentence, it is always recommended to have at least 3 copies of data in 2 different locations with 1 of them stored offline. By this, your data will be always available for your reference.
Analyze Which Data Need to be Backed Up
Owing to the data monitoring facility in Office 365, you can easily verify and determine the number of active users. Furthermore, you can identify what data is necessary and what is of no use. Through this, it will become easy for you to select and take a backup of the required files only.
Secure Your Data
You can never guess the damage you might have to face due to downtime or data loss. Thus, it’s better to keep your data safe and secure from internal as well as external issues.
To elaborate on the above, as per the shared responsibility model, Microsoft is partially in charge of client and endpoint protection. So, why not make use of Microsoft 365 defender, multifactor authentication, etc. like security provisions to secure your data.
Or, you can take it to the next level and secure your important Office 365 files by taking backup of the same using secure software. In this way, if you become a victim of a cyber-attack then also you don’t have to worry because you still have an extra copy by your side.
Choose the Reliable Approach
One of the most important components of the best practice is to preserve your sensitive data. Undoubtedly, Office 365 has various convincing features, but it also lacks security measures. Data residing in the cloud is vulnerable and exposed to various security threats. Thus, this cloud platform became the new favorite target of many hackers.
As a matter of fact, they aim to misuse organizations’ sensitive data. Hence, to avoid a chain of negative consequences of data loss, it’s better to take the entire backup of Office 365 accounts using a professional solution like SysTools Office 365 Backup & Restore Tool.
In this way, you can achieve two things altogether. One, you will have a copy of your data, and secondly, since you are using an automated tool, you will be able to avoid data redundancy through the incremental backup option.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, Microsoft has come up with an excellent productivity suite i.e Office 365. But, you can’t completely rely on the tech giant for the security of its data as it works on a shared responsibility model. So, it’s your responsibility to think about the safety of your valuable data and take backup of the same. Therefore, we have elaborated the Office 365 backup best practices.