The first question that might come to your mind: “Why do I need to back up my Office 365 Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business data?”

And it’s normally instantaneously followed up with a statement similar to this: “Microsoft takes care of it.”

Do they? Are you sure?

To add some clarity to this discussion, Veeam has created an Office 365 Shared Responsibility Model  designed to help Microsoft Office 365 users and anyone close to O365 technology understand exactly what Microsoft is responsible for and what responsibility falls on the business itself. After all — it is YOUR data!

Over the course of this post, you’ll see we’re going to populate out this Shared Responsibility Model. On the top half of the model, you will see Microsoft’s responsibility. This information was compiled based on information from the Microsoft Office 365 Trust Center, in case you would like to look for yourself.

On the bottom half, we will populate out the responsibility that falls on the business, or more specifically, the IT organization.

Microsoft Responsibility Vs Your Responsibility

Microsoft’s primary responsibility is focused on THEIR global infrastructure and their commitment to millions of customers to keep this infrastructure up and running, consistently delivering uptime reliability of their cloud service and enabling the productivity of users across the globe.

An IT organization’s responsibility is to have complete access and control of their data — regardless of where it resides. This responsibility doesn’t magically disappear simply because the organization made a business decision to utilize a SaaS application.

In other words, Microsoft’s infrastructure level protection for Office 365 users includes the physical security of their data centers and the authentication and identification within their cloud services, as well as the user and admin controls built into the Office 365 UI.

Your organization is responsible for security at a data-level.  There’s a long list of internal and external data security risks, including accidental deletion, rogue admins abusing access and ransomware to name a few. 

The final components are legal and compliance requirements. Microsoft makes it very clear in the Office 365 Trust Center that their role is of the data processor. This drives their focus on data privacy, and you can see on their site that they have a great list of industry certifications. Even though your data resides within Office 365, an IT organization’s role is still that of the data owner. And this responsibility comes with all types of external pressures from your industry, as well as compliance demands from your legal, compliance or HR peers.

But what about the Office 365 recycle bin?

It is true that Microsoft has a few different recycle bin options, and they can help you with limited, short-term data loss recovery. But if you are truly in complete control of your data, then “limited” can’t check the box. To truly have complete access and control of your business-critical data, you need full data retention. This is short-term retention, long-term retention and the ability to fill any / all retention policy gaps. In addition, you need both granular recovery, bulk restore and point-in-time recovery options at your fingertips.

What if I don’t backup my Office 365?

The points above have made it very clear that Microsoft provides a wide array of powerful services within Office 365 – but a comprehensive backup of your Office 365 data is not one of them. Without a backup of Office 365, you have limited access and control of your own data. You can fall victim to retention policy gaps and data loss dangers. You also open yourself up to some serious internal and external security risks, as well as regulatory exposure.

Why Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 ?

Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 eliminates the risk of losing access and control over your Office 365 data including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business – so that your data is always Hyper-Available and protected.

Veeam backup stores your data in a place of your choosing, so that you can easily access and recover exactly what you want, whenever you want. Besides, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 gives you the power to securely backup Office 365 and:

• Protect your Office 365 data from accidental deletion, security threats and retention policy gaps
• Quickly restore individual Office 365 items and files with industry-leading recovery flexibility
• Meet legal and compliance requirements with efficient eDiscovery of Office 365 backup archives

Get a Free Trial of Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365!

As a prominent Gold Microsoft & Veeam Partner as well as Veeam Silver Cloud & Service Provider in Saudi Arabia, Ctelecoms provides Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 to organizations of all sizes in Saudi Arabia. Talk to one of our experts today and let us deliver your FREE Veeam backup for O365 right away!