Microsoft 365 Backup

Yes, absolutely. While Microsoft provides excellent infrastructure and uptime, they operate under a shared responsibility model—Microsoft protects the infrastructure, but you're responsible for your data. Microsoft's native retention is limited (typically 30-93 days for deleted items) and isn't designed for long-term backup or recovery from user errors, malicious deletion, or ransomware. Their own service agreement explicitly recommends third-party backup. Without proper backup, data deleted beyond the retention period is gone forever.

We provide comprehensive backup for all major Microsoft 365 workloads: Exchange Online (emails, contacts, calendars, tasks), OneDrive for Business (all files and folder structures), SharePoint Online (sites, document libraries, lists), Microsoft Teams (channels, conversations, files, tabs), and Microsoft 365 Groups. Backups capture the full state of your data including permissions, metadata, and version history. This ensures you can recover exactly what you need, whether it's a single email or an entire SharePoint site.

We perform automated backups multiple times per day—typically every 4-8 hours depending on your configuration. This ensures minimal data loss if recovery is needed. Backups run automatically without any action required from your team and don't impact Microsoft 365 performance. We retain backups for extended periods (typically 1-7 years depending on your requirements) to meet compliance needs and provide access to historical data long after Microsoft's native retention expires.

Microsoft 365 backup typically costs $3-$8 per user per month depending on the solution and retention requirements. For a 25-user organization, expect approximately $75-$200 per month for comprehensive backup of Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. This is a small investment compared to the cost of data loss—recovering from a ransomware attack or extended data loss incident can cost thousands in downtime and recovery efforts. We provide detailed quotes based on your specific requirements.

Recovery speed depends on what you need to restore. Individual emails, files, or contacts can typically be restored within minutes. Larger recoveries like full mailboxes or SharePoint sites may take a few hours depending on data volume. Our backup solution provides granular recovery—you can restore a single item without restoring everything. We also offer self-service recovery for common scenarios, allowing your team to restore their own accidentally deleted items without waiting for IT support.

Yes, proper Microsoft 365 backup is essential ransomware protection. Ransomware can encrypt or delete your cloud data through synced devices or compromised accounts. Our backup solution stores copies of your data in a separate, secure location that ransomware cannot access. If your Microsoft 365 data is compromised, we can restore clean copies from before the attack. Backup retention periods ensure you can recover even if the attack isn't discovered immediately. Combined with other security measures, backup is your last line of defense.

Backup data is stored in secure, geographically distributed data centers separate from Microsoft's infrastructure. This ensures your backups remain accessible even if Microsoft experiences an extended outage. All backup data is encrypted both in transit and at rest using AES-256 encryption. Data centers are SOC 2 compliant with strict physical and logical security controls. For clients with specific compliance requirements, we can discuss data residency options to ensure backups stay within required geographic boundaries.

Yes, we offer self-service recovery options that allow end users to restore their own accidentally deleted emails and files without IT intervention. This reduces support burden and gets users back to work faster. Self-service is available through a simple web portal and can be enabled for specific users or the entire organization. IT administrators retain full access to all backup data and can perform more complex recoveries including cross-user restores, point-in-time recovery, and bulk restoration when needed.