Why Is It Necessary to Backup Office 365? Facts You Should Know
Has it ever occurred to you how Microsoft ensures the security of your Office 365 data? Microsoft has its own security measures and settings to protect the mailbox data. Users often wonder, Is it necessary to backup my Office 365 account?
Well, it is not necessary until you realize it is. Having worked in an Office 365 environment for almost a decade now, We feel the most profound thing you must be doing all the time is having a backup of your crucial data.
You never know what forth is coming to destroy your data integrity. There are these Ransomewares, cyber-attacks, advanced viruses, or just some insider threats (who knows someone you trust is secretly planning to jeopardize your very own data). Now the instances could be numerous and so are the up-shots.
The way we see a backup is slightly different since backups have worked for me the other way round, We would absolutely love to share it with you. So, I started creating backups of O365 accounts right after our organization faced an insider threat. This ex-employee was about to leave for some other projects and tried to violate the data integrity, eventually, it came forth and we lost some of our crucial business data to him.
Surprisingly, the person had first created the backup of that whole data in his own system and then he tried all the violations in the cloud. Eventually, we figured it out and the data got restored. From that time it came to our concern how crucial this backup is, although we always underestimated it.
The thing to realise is, a backup never goes out of trend. Not because you need it just to take up the space on offline storage but, in the situations of data loss you have the superpower to RESTORE back the whole thing.
A “backup” must never be underestimated!
A Good Office 365 Backup – Never Out of Style
The time you start having collective data, the necessity of Office 365 backups becomes conspicuous. Moreover, be it the offline backup or cloud backup both have their own significance. But I believe an old-school offline backup is still a forerunner.
Although Microsoft’s data security policies work to a certain extent, we can’t help but accept the fact that hacking attacks are still invincible with the unpredictability they carry. It is better to have a master plan already with backups!
Is Office 365 Backup Necessary? – The Major Threats
The most daunting threats to cloud data security that makes Office 365 backups necessary are generally cyber-attacks, malicious activities, hacking attempts, malware, ransomware, and inside attacks. Moreover, it can be very useful when the Office 365 subscription expires and the user wants to access the data after that.
Let’s get into more depth of each of these threats one by one.
#1 Unauthorised Access
By the time we realize somebody has unapproved access to our data, the consequences are not very likeable. According to tripwire, in 2017, a new hacking technique “Brute Force login attack” was actively used by a huge amount of sophisticated cyber crooks to access high-level information. Within a time span of just 7 months, nearly 100000 failed sign-in attempts were detected with 12 networks and 67 IP addresses.
Intriguing, isn’t it?
#2 Manual Errors
As much as the collaborative features of Office 365 make it convenient to many users, it becomes equally prone to human errors, resulting in catastrophic data loss. Even a minor error could cause blunders in the crucial databases, making it near too impossible for Microsoft to recover that information.
As a fact, 75% of data loss at corporates is caused by accidental data deletion or human errors. This report has been like this for almost 4 years now, according to multiple surveys by UpTime Institute and Information Commissioner’s Office at UK.
Typically when trying to migrate Office 365 files or data to a different platform/location, most of the human errors are detected. Either technical errors or simply misplacing of files, inattentiveness, disk formatting, and so on. What’s more interesting, it happens all the time!
#3 Cyber Attacks
The biggest challenge presently faced by cloud data storage is hacking and data breaches. 3 years ago in June 2016, a bunch of Office 365 user accounts was severely attacked by Cerber (a kind of Ransomware) which turned all of their data encrypted. User’s data got inaccessible, meanwhile, those who were using a third party backup to protect the data, were safe.
Just like this, there are several other attacks namely Botnet attack, Trojan horses, Spoofing and so many other malware, which have significantly damaged users’ precious data in the past and are still indomitable.
Ironically, ransomware and viruses will never stop attacking your data. Another type is always going to come forth with the aim to damage our data. So, needless to say, we are left with no other choice other than a Backup!
How About A Backup Plan That Protects Your Data with Minimal Efforts?
At SysTools we provide an ideal backup plan that can protect your data 365 days a year for every day. Now that must sound weird but that’s how uncertain the ransomware has become and that’s how active protection you need in order to survive these threats. Office 365 Cloud Backup & Restore utility is designed to provide users an on-premise backup of Office 365 cloud mailbox data with many other benefits.
- Back up your Emails, Appointments, Documents locally and forget the data loss worries.
- If you wish to migrate Office 365 data to some other platform, you get to export the data in PST file formats.
- Now coming to the Restore feature, any healthy PST file created by this utility, saved on your local storage can be quickly imported into Office 365 cloud user account with the tool.
- Other than these major features, Scheduled Backup is an awesome feature that can automatically backup your data monthly, weekly, yearly, or daily. But that is available on user demand.
- Adding to on-demand, you get to backup OneDrive documents as well.
Try it today with the free version of the software:
Steps for Most Effective Microsoft Office 365 Backup Strategy
Step: 1 Download and install this utility and run it on your computer. Select Office 365 as the source and Outlook as the destination backup platform.
Step: 2 Opt for desired Office 365 mailbox items like emails, contacts, calendars, and documents and use the date filter if required for selective data backup.
Step: 3 Sign in with admin account details like Admin ID and Application ID and hit validate button for permission validation.
Step: 4 Locate the path and destination for resulting PST file on your computer.
Step: 5 Now choose the required Office 365 account and click the start backup button.
Do You Need Any More Reasons to Backup Your Office Data?
To sum it up, we have tried to be as transparent as we can with the backup service we provide. About how necessary an Office 365 backup is, I don’t think you need any more reasons to protect your Office 365 data, do you?
Backup Your data right away because why not!
Some Commonly Asked Queries
This tool provides 365 days protection of data in a year by downloading the data in PST & EML file format on the local system.
Yes, you can schedule the backup through Scheduled Backup feature of the tool. Which will automatically save your data in yearly, monthly, weekly or daily wise.
Yes, You can backup your email data separately by a data filter. Through which you can select what type of data (email, calendar or contacts) to be download.
You can make use of the Date Filter option of the tool. Which will help you to backup your mailbox data within a particular date range accordingly.