The Indispensable Role of Third-Party Backup and Recovery in Safeguarding MSPs’ Microsoft Teams

Third-Party Backup and Recovery

05 July, 2023

Employing Microsoft 365 poses significant hazards to your clients without an adequate data protection strategy. Here’s how you can assist.

The increasing acceptance of this SaaS solution comes with a heightened danger of data loss and possible disaster, including ransomware, malware, and even basic things like human mistakes. If your business relies on Microsoft Teams for internal communication, consider backing up the data due to these threats. Office 365’s terms of service agreement make it clear that Microsoft is not liable for any possible data loss brought on by a disaster. Even though Microsoft Teams uses the cloud to store its data, additional backups should still be employed as an added security precaution.

When anything goes wrong and your data is lost or erased, even if the cloud storage cannot provide security, it keeps your data and older copies of crucial files that have been updated.

Here are five reasons to think about Office 365 backup solutions for data immediately.

Why You Should Backup Microsoft Teams

  1. Unintentional deletion 

One of the biggest contributors to significant data loss and other forms of disasters continues to be human mistakes. Users of Microsoft Office 365 have access to both soft and hard deletion options. You may typically find soft deleted data from teams in the recoverable objects folder.

This is even more challenging if a piece of data is hard to destroy. As a result, the workload no longer contains any easily recoverable traces of that particular piece of data, and doing so with an external backup would be easier and possible. Teams can benefit from additional backup techniques that can help you recover any data mistakenly subjected to deletion or corruption, even if the native capabilities in Office 356 make it much easier to restore data.

2. Data Security Limitation

Microsoft provides several built-in data protection mechanisms you and your clients should use. They do not, however, offer comprehensive backup and recovery services. They explicitly indicate that they are not accountable for your data in their shared responsibility model. Microsoft must maintain the service’s availability.

They also offer software as a service and are an infrastructure-as-a-service company. As a result, as stated in their terms and conditions, they bear no liability for the continuity and integrity of their client’s data. Now that this is possible, savvy MSPs may expand the value of their service offerings by providing Microsoft 365 backup and recovery services.

3. Extensive Utilization

The COVID epidemic hastened an already-current trend toward remote work and increased reliance on SaaS products like Microsoft 365 that facilitate working from home. Let’s face it: with a staggering 90% market share in office software, Microsoft is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. With more than 258 million Microsoft 365 subscribers worldwide, Microsoft is the unchallenged market leader despite the advances made by Google. Many of your current clients utilize Microsoft 365 as well.

4. Extended Recovery, Reduced Loss

The downtime if your Office 365 environment has been the target of an attack or any other potential danger can be significantly decreased by maintaining several backups. They might nonetheless aid you in minimizing any possible data loss kept inside Microsoft Teams.

Most disaster recovery plans rely on several backups to restore lost data with the least amount of data loss feasible. Because of this, depending solely on the security features that come with Office 365 would be risky. Having a team with its external backup might help you ensure that your firm can recover the data in case of potentially dangerous events.

5. Legal and Regulatory Obligations 

Amid legal proceedings, your customers may occasionally need to impromptu recover emails, files, or other forms of data. Litigation hold and retention are two safety nets that Microsoft has incorporated. However, these are the only reliable backup solutions to protect your clients’ business from legal issues.

For instance, if you unintentionally delete emails or documents before putting them on a legal hold, you can still retrieve them using a backup solution to ensure you comply with the law.

Different legal requirements, compliance standards, and access rules exist for other sectors and nations, but you need more time on your to-do list for fines, penalties, or legal conflicts.

6. Increased Independence

It’s critical to remember that any company should always work to maintain as much independence as possible in their data backup to boost their safety and freedom. Although Office 365 technologies that rely on cloud storage for backup can frequently restore data lost in Teams, maintaining additional backups of crucial data can help you stay secure when native data protection tools fail.

When you’re not relying on Office 365 teams and data recovery technologies, you have a lot more freedom in deciding what kind of data will be backed up. This is especially helpful when utilizing Microsoft Teams, which enables users to exchange various data, including text, voice, and photos. By keeping your separate backups, you can choose the most crucial information and ensure it is protected in an emergency without going through mountains of possibly unnecessary information.

7. Faulty Third-party Applications 

Finally, while many businesses use Microsoft Teams for internal communications, they also rely on various third-party applications, like Slack or Salesforce, to foster innovation and employ features that may not be included in Office 365 natively. However, utilizing these external applications exposes your Microsoft Teams workload to various security risks.

These programs could be out-of-date, making them a prime target for other assaults, or they might result in other problems like an inadvertent file or user deletion. Relying on the built-in Office 365 security features may be challenging if data is lost in this manner, as Microsoft is not liable for issues brought on by third-party programs. When using additional data backups, remember that you and your business should.

How Can Microsoft Teams Be Backed Up And Restored?

To backup and recover Microsoft Teams data, MSPs and their clients can use a variety of technologies, including:

  • Microsoft Team’s data loss due to accidental or malicious deletion can be avoided with native Microsoft 365 data preservation features at the corporate license level. However, they are not simple backup solutions.
  • On-premises backup systems can protect file-level data synchronized from SharePoint or OneDrive for Business repositories, but real-time chat backups will be missed.
  • Certain aspects of Teams collaboration will be backed up by cloud backups for email or file-level data, but the recovery procedure will be laborious and complicated.
  • The best option for complete and adequate data backup and recovery for Microsoft Teams is purpose-built, third-Party cloud backup solutions.

Final Takeaway, 

Given the enormous popularity of various online work settings, paying attention to potential security risks and safety concerns that might affect remote work is more crucial than ever. If the company uses Microsoft Teams, the built-in security capabilities of Office 365 must be enhanced to secure the security of your data. Consider conducting additional data backups to increase the security of your Teams in case of eventual calamities.