It’s common for organisations using cloud services to have a false sense of security about their files always being available no matter what.
While cloud service providers do typically use redundant data centers to ensure uptime for their clients, that’s not the same thing as backing up your business data.
What happens if a user deletes a file by accident or if Microsoft’s retention policy doesn’t match your own? There are multiple risks of data loss of your cloud-hosted files if you have no backup to fall back on.
Too many companies don’t include their Office 365 or SharePoint data in their backup and recovery plan because they think they’re covered by the cloud provider, but according to Microsoft, that’s the not case at all.
If you review the Microsoft Services Agreement, you’ll find that they actually recommend that users regularly backup the data from their Microsoft cloud services. Their agreement states:
“In the event of an outage, you may not be able to retrieve Your Content or Data that you’ve stored. We recommend that you regularly backup Your Content and Data that you store on the Services or store using Third-Party Apps and Services.”
Reasons to Start Backing up Your Cloud Services Files… Now!
From cloud account security threats from credential theft to unexpected SaaS outages, your cloud data is at risk of loss in a number of different ways.
According to McAfee’s Cloud Adoption and Risk Report:
- The average organisation sees 12.2 compromised account threats in the cloud each month.
- 92% of companies have some of their cloud credentials for sale on the Dark Web.
- 21% of all files in the cloud contain sensitive data.
Here’s why it’s vital that you regularly back up all the data in your SharePoint and Office 365 platforms.
Human Error
Human error and hard drive crashes are the two most common causes of data loss. Together, they account for about 75% of all data loss incidents. If someone deletes data from your SharePoint or Office 365 account and you haven’t backed it up, that data is gone for good.
The same is true of accidental overwriting of files. With no backup in place, you have nothing to fall back on, because the cloud service is simply saving the document that you’ve uploaded, including any new edits.
Differences in Retention Policies
If your account credentials have been compromised without your knowledge and a hacker deletes items in your SharePoint account, within 93 days (SharePoint’s retention period), they’ll be deleted.
The email retention policy in Microsoft Exchange is complicated and involves setting various Retention Policy Tags. If something isn’t flagged correctly, it can mean emails being deleted that you needed to save for archive or legal purposes.
Backing up your Microsoft data means you’ll have it as long as you need it and won’t lose data due to locked-in retention policies that caused data to be deleted after a certain number of days.
Ransomware Can Impact Your Cloud Services
If your company suffers a ransomware attack and the ransomware code is accidentally uploaded to your SharePoint or OneDrive cloud storage, all your cloud files could be compromised and rendered unreadable.
In 2018, over 100 international businesses were targeted by the Ryuk ransomware strain, including cloud service providers.
Cloud service providers are increasingly being targeted with ransomware and other malware, making it critical that you have a backup copy of your data elsewhere that can be recovered in case of an attack that impacts your cloud services.
Deleting Inactive Users Can Mean Major File Loss
If your lead marketing manager retires and your Office 365 administrator quickly deletes their account to prevent your company from paying for a subscription they no longer need, all your marketing assets could be lost.
When users are deleted, if their files haven’t been reassigned, then you could lose everything that was stored in their account if you haven’t backed up all that data separately.
You’re Not Held Hostage by Outages
All it takes is one major cloud service outage to cause thousands of offices to be at a standstill. Outages have happened recently with services like Asana and Slack, and in January of 2019, Office 365 Exchange Online mailboxes were inaccessible by users all morning due to an unexpected service outage.
When you have backups of your data, you’re not locked out of your information due to unexpected cloud provider outages that you have no control over.
Get a Backup Plan in Place for Your Microsoft Services
When disaster strikes, a solid backup solution ensures that you can put the pieces back together quickly. FutureRange can help you with a backup plan for your Office 365 and SharePoint services as well as any other cloud or on-premises data that needs to be protected.
Contact us today to get started with a solid backup plan! Call +353 1 2960 560 or reach us online.
