#1 Microsoft 365 Backup and Recovery

There are many compliance and availability capabilities built into Microsoft 365, but comprehensive backup is not one of them. Customer data is not Microsoft’s responsibility according to their Shared Responsibility Model — rather, the data generated in Microsoft 365 is the responsibility of the customer and needs to be protected by that customer. Industry analysts and Microsoft MVPs wildly agree that a third-party backup provider is necessary to mitigate the risk of permanent data loss occurring in Microsoft 365.

To back up Office 365 data, it is recommended that you use a third-party backup provider or service. An Office 365 backup vendor will generally be able to provide simple processes to create backups and provide enough scheduling flexibility to meet any RPOs or RTOs. Backup vendors are also able to provide fast and granular data recovery that comes with advanced search capabilities so administrators can quickly find items to meet their legal and compliance needs. 

To back up Microsoft Teams, it’s important to understand how Teams works on the back end. Teams is not a self-contained application, which means it acts as abstraction layer that brings data together from other applications, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. It’s important to back up your data from these other sources, but it’s equally important to back up configurations as well (i.e., settings, members and team structure). For this purpose, you should leverage a third-party backup provider armed with the latest Microsoft APIs to ensure that you can back up not only the data from key sources but the metadata and configurations for comprehensive data protection and efficient recovery.

According to a number of surveys, one of the most common causes of data loss in the cloud is accidental deletion. With this in mind, recovering Exchange email items should be an easy process for organizations. Third-party backup vendors can offer simple restore processes so you can recover mailboxes, messages, tasks, contacts and folders as well as hard deleted items and litigation hold items in just a few clicks. The recovery options offered by backup vendors can vary, but in general you should work with a vendor that uses a wide range of save, send and export options so your data can be recovered and get back into the hands of your users in a timely manner. You should also be able to restore to the original location, or another location if needed.