There’s a good chance you use Microsoft Office 365 to conduct important business, whether on-site or from relatively new remote or home offices. You’re in good company: Microsoft recently added an impressive 40 million active users over six months, bringing the total to more than 115 million users as of last October. More than 650,000 companies in the U.S. use the Office suite and Microsoft Teams eclipses other popular collaboration tools, including the powerhouse Slack. 

Organizations like yours rely on Microsoft Office 365 to stay connected and productive and to grow and scale your business. Yet, while Office 365 boasts millions of satisfied users, the suite is not without risk. While you'll most likely benefit from Microsoft’s cloud-collaboration capabilities, you'll also want to take a deep look at the associated security implications and risks. In short, when it comes to protecting, accessing, and restoring your data, you should understand where Microsoft’s responsibility ends and yours begins.

In this post, we highlight some of the risks you face and propose a solution to more fully protect the critical data and information that inherently resides in your various Office 365 products and services. 

Email Security is Important. Very Important. Here’s Why.

Let’s first set the stage. Email continues to be a key target vector for cyberattack in 2021. Nearly all instances of malware arrive through email; one study put this number at a whopping 94% of cases. Phishing is another notable threat for businesses, comprising 80% of social engineering attacks in which a scammer may pose as a known or trusted entity in an attempt to get you to install malware. 

Email has, and will continue to be, an organization’s most-used and thus most important communication channel. But nefarious hackers know and act upon this, too. Unfortunately, email-based attacks are notoriously easy (and relatively affordable) for today’s most prolific or damaging cybercriminals. All it takes is one incident or bad email to bring your operations to a halt. Further, the cost to the U.S. economy is not small. Combined, attacks like these carry an annual price tag of $100 billion!

The good news is, there are some basic measures you can implement for more secure incoming and outgoing email. This may include adopting new practices or policies around email encryption and two-factor authentication, implementing a password management tool, securing endpoint devices and WiFi connections (especially for remote working), and empowering your team with information and resources to act as your first line of defense against email intrusion. 

But even with these measures in place, you may still be neglecting one key safeguard: the Office 365 subscriber data that Microsoft is not responsible for.

Misconceptions of Microsoft Office 365

To be clear, we should begin by stating that Microsoft Office 365 does indeed provide the necessary infrastructure and features to support your business and, when properly configured, it also offers baseline protections to help keep your data and information secure. Remember, the responsibility to properly configure (and use) Office 365 will be on you and your technology team. This may include a training component to ensure employees and other stakeholders are following best practices and established policies related to email and data use.

This responsibility also includes how you will secure the copious data that is created, stored, delivered, and accessed through Office 365. For example, did you know that your Office 365 subscriber data, which includes mailboxes and files in OneDrive and SharePoint Document Libraries, is not backed up as part of your Microsoft subscription? This data can not only be the target of cyberattacks, but also can be accidentally lost or deleted through simple human (user) error. 

While Microsoft will provide basic archiving and retention of this data, including versioning features, the company simply can’t ensure fast and full restoration in the event of data loss. Because Microsoft Office 365 does not provide these critical data protection services, the responsibility for it will fall on you and your team. 

Backing up your Microsoft Office 365 data is important for the simple reason that there’s so much of it. One study suggests that more than half (58.4%) of sensitive, cloud-stored company data exists in Office documents. Which makes it more important than ever to invest in a robust and reliable backup and recovery solution that is specific to Office 365. 

How to Protect your Office 365 Data

We can all agree that a robust backup and recovery solution for Microsoft Office 365 data is a critical cybersecurity measure for today’s modern business. Which is why we’re excited to partner with Altaro, an award-winning software developer, to help protect your business against unexpected data loss or damage.

Unfortunately, at N8 Solutions, we’re all too familiar with the common refrain of, I know I should have backed up our data, but we didn’t have the time or resources to implement a robust solution. It was on our to-do list! Many smaller firms lack the dedicated staff to implement such a solution. And even at larger firms, good help can be hard to come by—40 percent of IT leaders say cybersecurity jobs are the most difficult to fill.

If this sounds familiar, consider working with an expert third party to protect your critical Microsoft Office 365 data. We did our due diligence and partnered with Altaro as it offers a best-in-class solution to protect, centrally store, and back up all of your mailboxes and files, in a single location for easy access, searching, and recovery. This includes everything from emails and attachments to important files to contacts and calendars. Data is backed up to a Microsoft Azure infrastructure and includes unlimited storage and 24/7 support, underpinned by 24/7 Lightning Fast Support Call Response Guarantee of under 30 seconds.

Implementing a solution like N8’s Office 365 Backup solution will help in myriad ways:

• Data loss: By fully backing up your Office 365 mailboxes, including OneDrive and SharePoint, you'll protect against data loss for quicker data recovery in the event of accidental deletion or cyberattack.

• Security threats: Mitigate the risk of critical data being lost or destroyed with regular backups of your Office 365 data and lightning fast recovery.

• Retention policies: Office 365 has a limited standard retention policy of 30 days. However, most businesses need to be able to access data much further back to comply with compliance and business requirements. Opting for a third-party backup and recovery solution means your data can be recovered on a more granular level.

Have a LOT of data? No problem. With our Office 365 Backup solution, storage is unlimited and not confined to local storage infrastructure. And there are no extra fees, so you'll have access to all features, across all users. 

Ready to get started?

Good call! While Microsoft Office 365 offers basic protections, it’s critical to take it one step further to protect your subscriber data from human error or cyberattack. Sometimes we need the help of others. In this case, we hope you’ll consider our Office 365 Backup solution. We work in tandem with you to understand and implement a backup and recovery solution that is unique to your business and how you use Microsoft Office 365.

Please get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help you protect a critical component of your thriving business—your Microsoft Office 365 subscriber data. When you invest in these important cybersecurity measures, you also invest in your own peace of mind, competitiveness, and scalable growth.

We look forward to hearing from you!