Do You Know Office 365 Email Backup Policy to Protect O365 Data ?

Office 365 Email Backup Policy

Ashish Ratan Singh | Modified: March 31, 2018 | Office 365 | 4 Minutes Reading

Office 365 Email Backup Policy

Office 365 is the communications hub that enables dynamic, collaborative workplaces for its users. An organization sends or receives the number of emails, data & documents daily that increase data items dramatically every day. But, more data means more risk. Although Microsoft spends over $1 billion every year on cybersecurity research and development, still it doesn’t mean Office 365 data is safe in the cloud. The data protection in the Office 365 data against the data loss, file corruption, and malicious intent is a topmost priority for Microsoft & also it is an integral part of the Office 365 service. So, this article will cover the Office 365 Email backup policy and how to fully protect O365 data on cloud.

Microsoft Office 365 Email Backup Policy

Data loss in Office 365 is a major concern for its users because the retention policies cannot fully guarantee a complete and speedy restore of lost data. And, the retention policies vary for each application included in the cloud platform. Recently, a new backup or retention policy settings has come from Microsoft Outlook. Previously, if an email was deleted from the Outlook, then, there was a period of 30 days in which the email message could be recovered. After that, it was gone forever. But, nowadays Microsoft allows admins to customize retention or backup for deleted items in the Office 365.

These are some points to notice regarding Office 365 backup and retention policies provided by Microsoft:

  • This new retention policy applies only to MS Outlook. The backup policies vary from service to service within Office 365. So, it is very difficult to manage.
  • The Office 365 email backup policy is always developing and tend to be very complex. If a person is not constantly monitoring their organization’s data & investing their time to understand the complex things. Then it becomes an easy task to understand the retention policy.
  • Office 365 retention and backup policies can only protect users from data loss in a limited way and it is not sufficient to give a complete backup solution.

Only Backup & Retention Policies are Not Sufficient for a Complete Backup

As we discussed above, the backup and retention policies of Office 365 are not a substitute for a successful backup process, because of Office 365 assists mobility and productivity. As more of our data moves to the cloud service, it is crucial to keep security top of mind. But, Microsoft’s policies are not designed to easily back up data. There are following four key facts about data protection for Office 365.

  • There are many common causes of data loss which is still risks in Office 365.
  • Users need to share the responsibility for data protection in Office 365 account.
  • In the current era, traditional methods of data protection do not work with Office 365.
  • Cloud-to-cloud backup is the best option to fully protect your data in Office 365.

How to Fully Protect Your Data in Office 365?

There are multiple inbuilt security capabilities integrated with Office 365 that can help to protect your data in Office 365 from many incidents like file corruption, deletion, and malicious intent, etc.

  • Data Loss Prevention: It helps users to identify, monitor, and save the crucial data through the deep content analysis process.
  • Office 365 Protection: It provides a husky email protection against the virus and malware spams.
  • Advanced Threat Protection: This protection is extended by safeguarding your Office 365 environment from the most sophisticated unknown threats.
  • Threat Intelligence: It offers an interactive tool to analyze the number and severity of threats or virus in surroundings. It can also customize the threat alert notification and rectification capabilities for mistrustful content.
  • Auditing: This auditing option helps users to monitor and investigate the many actions of content, and identify the risks and threats. It also protects the valuable intellectual property.
  • Advanced Data Governance: This option offers smart policy recommendations & automatic data classifications. It will allow you to take actions on data items such as retention and deletion throughout its lifecycle.

The Final Words

In this write-up, we have talked about Office 365 email backup policy and how to fully protect your O365 cloud’s data. After these discussions, we noticed that retention policies are not sufficient to take backup of Office 365 data. So, users have to fully protect their data with the help of some inbuilt utility of Office 365.