Here’s a conversation we have at least once a month: “We use Microsoft 365, so our data is backed up, right?” The answer is no. And the distinction matters more than most business owners realize.
Microsoft’s Shared Responsibility Model
Microsoft guarantees the availability of their service — meaning their data centers won’t lose your data due to hardware failure. But they don’t protect your data from accidental deletion, malicious insiders, ransomware encryption, or retention policy gaps. That’s on you.
What Can Go Wrong
- An employee accidentally deletes a SharePoint site. After 93 days, it’s gone. Permanently.
- Ransomware encrypts files synced through OneDrive. The encrypted versions overwrite the good ones.
- A terminated employee’s mailbox gets deleted on schedule. Six months later, someone needs an email from that mailbox for a legal matter.
- An admin misconfigures a retention policy. Thousands of emails vanish.
The Fix: Third-Party Backup
A proper Microsoft 365 backup solution captures your Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint sites, OneDrive files, and Teams data independently of Microsoft’s own retention. You get point-in-time recovery, search across backups, and the ability to restore individual items or entire accounts.
What It Costs
Typically $3-5 per user per month. Compare that to the cost of losing critical business data or failing a compliance audit because you can’t produce records. It’s not even close.
Don’t assume Microsoft has your back. Let’s set up proper backup for your 365 environment.
