Did You Know That Microsoft 365 Doesn’t Back Up All Your Data?

Microsoft 365 permeates the business world, and its tools are among the most widely used in offices globally. Yet, unbeknownst to many companies is the fact that Microsoft 365 does not come with in-built data backup procedures.

Microsoft is a sophisticated family of programmes that allows you to create, communicate, present, and much more with tools such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, One Drive and SharePoint.

Owing to the fact that Microsoft does house document-sharing software like SharePoint and OneDrive, many businesses mistakenly believe that all their files and data across Microsoft 365 are sufficiently backed up and safe. However, this is not the case as Microsoft was never designed for data protection and recovery in the same way as a dedicated cloud data backup system will be.

The result is that business data, client data, financial data and any important documents could be at risk in your company if you don’t have some type of data protection beyond Microsoft 365.

Why Does It Matter That Microsoft 365 Doesn’t Back Up Your Business Data?

Well, while you or your staff may not often think about it, businesses without appropriate backups for their data are open to many vulnerabilities.

Accidentally delete a file that you think you didn’t need anymore and days later realise it had crucial information? With Microsoft 365 and no data backup solution, that information is lost completely.

Office server malfunction? Sadly, all that work is lost. Hours of productivity down the drain.

Ex-staff members, who retained access, maliciously deleted data? Unfortunately, it is simply gone and there is no way to retrieve it if you don’t invest in data backups.

For personal use, losing the odd file may not be that dire, but for a business, it can be a catastrophe. It can lose you money and clients and can even get you into legal trouble if you were responsible for important client data. Depending on your industry and services, the consequences of lost data could be financially and legally severe. At the very least, it can waste a lot of time for businesses.

Office 365 Is Not Alone In This Vulnerability

This vulnerability is not simply a quirk or error of Microsoft 365. They have never claimed to carry out data protection and it has always been clear that this would be the responsibility of the company to arrange its own data protection solutions.

This is fairly standard practice for a collection of business tools that aren’t anything to do with data protection. Office 365 is not alone in this.

SAGE software is also a commonly seen entity of many businesses the world over. This software isn’t just for collaboration and creating content, but rather actual financial data. SAGE deals with payroll, accounting, and business financial tracking and solution. Yet again, this is not data protection software. Despite the fact that it handles delicate financial information and bookkeeping that would be incredibly frustrating or even damaging to lose, it does not significantly backup this data. It can be easily lost.

If companies want to adequately protect their files and data, they require a dedicated data protection and backup system.

The Solution Is For Businesses To Utilise Cloud Data Backup Systems

The only way to ensure that your files don’t fall victim to accidental deletion, malicious deletion, malware, natural disaster, or server errors is to invest in cloud data backup systems.

Now, businesses can also try local backup with external extra hard drives or backup onto their shared servers. The weaknesses of this are that cloud data backup offers data protection offsite. If you had a flood, or a large disaster that affected your entire office, then local hard drive backups are not going to be much help.

In fact, 75% of IT managers who had a backup system in place couldn’t restore all of the lost data. A comprehensive, reliable and offsite backup system is, therefore, the best way to protect your company.

It is also true that in modern business, you could have a lot of remote staff, or hybrid and WFH staff, so having a cloud data backup just makes sense to protect all the data in the company.

Why Squirrel Is The Best Option For Data Backup?

Squirrel cloud data backup from Hardsoft does exactly what it says on the tin. It squirrels away your data safely, AKA makes copies on a secure cloud server hosted by Hardsoft.

Then, in the event of file loss locally on your devices or server, your digital “nuts”, more accurately known as your files and data, can be rapidly unearthed and restored by Squirrel.

Squirrel is the ultimate data backup system for Windows Servers, Microsoft 365, and NAS.

What makes Squirrel different is the high level of security and how much is properly backed up.

All data backup solutions are different and if you are using automatic backups, then that is great guaranteed protection; however, it can be unclear precisely which of your data is being appropriately backed up and retrievable.

Squirrel backs up what most solutions fail to back up. It can easily and seamlessly back up all the files that you utilise, including all of your Microsoft 365 files and SAGE files. These can all be automatically backed up and protected for your entire business, across multiple offices and including WFH staff.

The Squirrel system by Hardsoft is also a highly secure and affordable cloud data backup solution. It is also one of the most robust and thorough data backup options and is developed directly by Hardsoft who are ISO 27001 certified for data security. It is only £9.90 per week and is very flexible to allow you to select the amount of storage that is right for your company.

If you have only experienced cloud data backup in the form of iCloud or Google, then you won’t have experienced a very sophisticated version. Squirrel goes far beyond these systems. It not only backs up your data but ensures the security of all your files, including Outlook data, so all correspondence is kept. It offers more secure backups for OneDrive and SharePoint. This solution can even allow multiple computers in a large company of devices to be backed up to a single centralised location.

Our expert team can guide you on which level of storage will suit your business needs in a free 30-minute one-on-one call with our consultation team.