The advent of cloud SaaS applications such as Microsoft Office 365 led many to believe that regular data backups were no longer necessary. Given that the data stored in the cloud is often essential to a business and its customers, or required for regulatory compliance, it’s essential to assess the need to back it up. Here are three important questions to ask during the assessment:
- Which Office 365 Applications Do We Use?
The first step is to take stock of the MS Office 365 applications your organization uses and all the data that currently resides in the cloud. This part of the assessment should consist of accounting for how much storage is required to back up the data and the reason the backup is needed. It’s necessary to assess the size and complexity of these data stores. It will help backup vendors to modify their Azure Backup Service to your situation.
- Are Office 365’s Protective Features Enabled?
The risk of accidental and malicious deletions can be mitigated by protective features built into Office 365. Therefore, you should even assess whether there are existing safeguards that can be implemented.
One scenario for data loss is an administrator who has the privilege to delete data. It is common for the admin to handle the removal of storage space and the deletion of accounts when employees leave the company.
Another potential problem is hackers acquiring access to privileged administrator accounts and destroying data on the cloud. This issue can be mitigated with strong security measures. MFA and products like Cloud App Security can dramatically reduce the chance of this happening.
- Where Are the Data Security Gaps?
Once the first two steps of the assessment are done, the next is to determine whether there are still data security gaps in Office 365. Any risk which can guide to data loss should be included in the discussion, whether it’s employee error, vendor failure, or external attacks. Data needed to comply with regulations or support essential business processes will need to be backed up.
Office 365 Backups
If the assessment reveals that Office 365 backups are required, the most practical solution is a third-party cloud-to-cloud backup service. With Office 365 Backup Solutions, organizations can easily schedule periodic backups of records and necessary data like emails and customer information. As an Office 365-wide service, they even bundle together the retention of Exchange emails, OneDrive backups, and SharePoint mirrors.
Create Recovery Plans
Backing up MS Office 365 data to a third-party cloud service is just one step in the process of protecting against data loss. It’s also necessary to carefully craft recovery plans for different events that can trigger the restoration of data from a backup.
Recovery plans should include both an authorization and deployment process to ensure vital data isn’t overwritten or overlooked.
Read also: Guide To Preparing for Microsoft MS-100
The Future of Cloud Backups
Every business organization should periodically assess the demand to backup data that resides on cloud services like Microsoft Office 365. It’s even important to reassess whether data needs backup protection in the future. Thanks to flexible third-party cloud services, backup problems are much easier to manage today.
Conclusion
Now, knowing what you know about Microsoft 365, you are probably convinced that having a third-party backup is the way to go. While that fact is refutable, you still need to choose the best IT company like Apps4Rent to get the best backup services. Apart from that they even provide top-grade Services of Windows Cloud PC Azure and support their clients which makes them superior partners to select for the service.
