The Necessity for a Standalone Cloud Backup Solution with Microsoft 365: Grasping the Concept of Disaster Recovery.
Recovering data is essential to business continuity
As we further embrace the digital era, it’s evident that data has become the lifeblood of businesses worldwide. Thanks to its vast range of collaborative tools, Microsoft 365 has emerged as a frontrunner in enterprise software. However, there’s an essential aspect that businesses should pay attention to. While Microsoft 365 includes disaster recovery, file version control and a recycle bin, it does not offer a comprehensive backup system, necessitating a separate cloud backup solution for Sharepoint and OneDrive Documents and Email.
Microsoft 365 and Disaster Recovery
Microsoft 365 does an excellent job of ensuring service availability and protecting against site-wide disasters. It offers built-in resilience via disaster recovery capabilities, such as geo-redundancy, where your data is replicated in multiple locations. This mechanism safeguards against unforeseen disasters affecting an entire site or region.
However, disaster recovery is a broader term that primarily concerns maintaining service and data availability during and after catastrophic events. It doesn’t necessarily guarantee data protection at the granular level, especially regarding individual user errors, accidental deletions, or malicious attacks.
The Importance of Backup
On the other hand, a backup system creates a copy of your data at regular intervals that can be restored at any point, ensuring protection at a much more granular level. This is crucial to safeguard against data loss scenarios not covered by disaster recovery. For instance, if an employee accidentally or purposely deletes an essential file or email. Or a hacker wipes out your Archive data that you do not immediately realise it has gone. A backup can save the day by restoring the data to its original state even a year or more later.
Microsoft 365 does not offer a traditional backup solution. It has retention policies, but they need to be more comprehensive. They can fall short when you need to recover specific data.
Why a Separate Cloud Backup System is Required
Considering the limitations of Microsoft 365’s inbuilt mechanisms, a separate cloud backup solution becomes essential. It offers more robust protection against a more comprehensive array of data loss scenarios. Whether it’s accidental deletions, malicious insider activities, or malware infections, a dedicated backup system can quickly restore lost or compromised data.
Additionally, a separate backup solution can be tailored to meet specific business requirements, including compliance with various data protection regulations. These solutions often provide more control over the backup and recovery process, providing peace of mind and data security in an increasingly precarious digital landscape.
Conclusion
In conclusion, while Microsoft 365’s disaster recovery capabilities offer decent data protection, you should complement it with an external 3rd party comprehensive backup system to ensure optimal data protection and recovery.
This additional layer of data protection could be the difference between a minor inconvenience and a major catastrophe.
The latest cloud-to-cloud backup solutions are low-touch, self-managing and cost-effective,
Speak to a cloud solution expert, such as F1Group, today to understand the best options for your business.