Many business owners assume that because their email and files are "in the cloud", they are backed up. Microsoft 365 is very reliable, but reliability is not the same as backup.
What Microsoft does
Microsoft keeps the service available and protects against hardware failure in its data centres. If a server fails, your mailbox keeps working.
What Microsoft does not do for you
- Long-term recovery of deleted items. Deleted emails and files are kept only for a limited time. After that they are gone.
- Protection from ransomware. If ransomware encrypts files that sync to OneDrive, the encrypted versions sync too.
- Leaver mailboxes. When you remove a licence from a former employee, their mailbox can be deleted after a short grace period.
- Mistakes by admins or users. A wrong bulk deletion is carried out faithfully.
What a proper backup looks like
A separate, automated backup copies your mail, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams data to storage that is independent of your Microsoft 365 tenant. You can restore a single email or an entire mailbox to any point in time.
The key test is simple: when did you last restore something? We set up Microsoft 365 backup with scheduled restore tests, so you know it works before you need it.