With GDPR on the horizon and many organisations rapidly moving to Office 365, Azure services, Skype for Business and SharePoint online it seems many are not 100% clear on the distinction of responsiblities between their organisation and Microsoft themselves.
The plain bare fact is that YOU and your organisation are responsible for your data. All of it. Not Microsoft, sure they provide the service and there are SLA’s associated with those services – but those SLA’s can still be met if even if all your data was maliciously or accidentally erased i.e. the service is still running (even though all your data is gone!).
Microsoft are not responsible for backup or restore of your data.
Again, you might say there is 30 days backup for Office365 and 14 days for SharePoint online – but this only provides a limited amount of protection against data loss. Believe it or not any restore requirements are on a best effort from Microsoft as oppsed to tied to a distinct SLA. As with all cloud services, functionality and features continually change and evolve, a good thing generally BUT when talking about backup/restore and data loss this uncertainty around continual change represents a significant risk to your critical data.
Granular restore of a specific document in SharePoint online? Forget it, it’s either the whole Site Collection (yes, everything!) or nothing.
What to do about it?
First the DON’T: Don’t rely upon Recycle Bins & Version control; Don’t rely upon Microsoft Support; Don’t wait for a best effort restore that might wipe more recent data
Much like the traditional backup method > to tape, offsite storage, cyclical backup procedure, testing restores you need an equivalent plan for your data stored in:
- Office 365
- Azure VMs
- SharePoint Online
- Skype for Business
- Onedrive
- and more
You need a service that backs up your data reliably & efficiently, that has SLAs associated with it and allows easy granular data based restores as & when needed. Here are some BaaS options:
KeepIt – www.keepit.com – Simple setup cloud to cloud backup storage; backup Office 365 or G-suite; Easy to restore
Metalogix Essentials – www.metalogix.com – Migration and backup/restore for Office 365
CloudAlly – www.cloudally.com – Office 365 backup within a few clicks; Non-destructive Restore
AvePoint – www.avepoint.com – DocAve has been backing up SharePoint before cloud was a thing; Now they do Cloud; It’s a good thing
Skykick – www.skykick.com – SharePoint & Onedrive backup; Fast search; One-click Restore
There are more options of course.