6 Ways You Can Still Lose Business Data in Office 365

For decades, Office 365 has been the standard productivity tool for businesses and other organizations. Sure, Microsoft Office 365 has robust backup capabilities to ensure smooth business operations.

There is no doubt Office 365 offers great business solutions and is quite cost-effective for managing business e-mails, data, and collaboration among teams.

However, these functionalities are not built to work like magic where you just call it up, and it does whatever you want it to do. With the availability of the Microsoft product in the Cloud, many people (including some IT administrators) share the misconception the bundled productivity software is automatically backed up, and the data contained inside can be easily retrieved or recovered from the Internet.

Having Office 365 isn’t a surefire solution to data loss or file recovery. To be candid, the fact Office 365 supports Cloud storage capabilities doesn’t make it invulnerable. This is because even Cloud-based applications and data are vulnerable to end-user deletion, malware or ransomware attacks, operational errors, data loss because of canceled user licenses, etc.

To avoid being a victim, look at these six ways a company can lose business data in Office 365.

1. Outlook and Exchange Online

As a business organization, you are heavily involved in sending and receiving e-mails from clients and partners every day. Many times, you will have to delete certain e-mails you deem unimportant. The good news is deleted e-mails are backed up.

However, they are only backed up for 30 days, after which they are permanently deleted. In addition, Microsoft does not back up user contacts and calendar data by default.

2. Data Loss Because of Inactive Licenses

 Normally, Office 365’s license is provided to the user so he or she could utilize Office 365 tools. Nonetheless, inactive users will have their data permanently deleted, while having no option to roll back their data.

3. OneDrive and SharePoint

OneDrive and SharePoint are two services that business organizations integrate for maximum productivity. These services only keep the latest file versions. This implies any changes made to previous versions will be overridden.

This can lead to the loss of vital data you might need unless you activate Versioning, which is a manual operation.

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4. Data Loss When a File is Permanently Deleted

If a SharePoint online administrator happens to delete a collection, all the deleted data will be temporarily stored in the Recycle Bin for 93 days. After 93 days, all data will be permanently deleted automatically without no rollback option.

5. Loss of Data When Restoring Files

When restoring previous files from a SharePoint backup, the file restoration overwrites the data that currently exist in the site collection. There is no option to roll it back.

6. Loss of Time When Restoring Files

Restoring files isn’t just a tough task. It’s also time-consuming and can impede business processes. Seeking help and assistance from the Microsoft Support desk with data loss issues may also not yield the results you wished for.

With all the above limitations of Office 365, it is, therefore, advisable to embrace supplemental, Cloud back-up solutions to ensure business continuity and disaster-recovery solution.

An excellent supplemental Office 365 backup will promptly cover:

• OneDrive: All files (including OneNote) and folders with structure intact
• Contacts: All contact information
• Calendar: Events (including, attendees, recurrence, notes), attachments, and any calendars owned by users
• Mail: All e-mails, attachments, notes, and folder structure
• SharePoint: Primary, custom, group, and team site collections
• Custom Generic Site Lists
• Folder Structure
• Document Libraries and sets
• Site assets, templates, and pages

Conclusion

Office 365 is the premium software package for organizations that want to be productive. Many of these organizations believe that anything stored on Office 365 becomes automatically backed up. This notion has dwindled the productivity level of many businesses when they can’t find the documents they thought were forever saved.

That’s why we advise companies that want to stay productive to embrace supplemental, Cloud back-up solutions. A supplemental, Cloud back-up solution keeps your files intact while always giving you access to it.

If you’re looking to ensure that your Office 365 Business data is adequately protected against data loss, you can contact us for a complimentary consultation with a member of our team.