With nearly 300 million active monthly users, Microsoft 365 is the fastest-growing product in Microsoft’s history — and there’s no sign growth will slow anytime soon. By providing online access to business-critical applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and SharePoint, the subscription service has been instrumental in the transition to remote work.
As we noted in last week’s post however, the rapid shift to the cloud model has created confusion about data security and backup responsibilities. According to one survey, more than 80 percent of Microsoft 365 users have experienced some degree of data loss, largely because they mistakenly assumed Microsoft was already providing all the data protection they need.
In truth, organizations without their own backup strategy for Microsoft 365 expose themselves to significant risk. Accidental deletions, overwritten data, account deactivation, migration errors, app corruption and malicious attacks are among the common causes of data loss in the cloud.
Taking Charge
To minimize such risks, you need a cloud backup solution that delivers all the protections you would implement for on-premises solutions. For example, you need unlimited storage and data retention, full visibility into the backup environment, point-in-time recovery capabilities and privacy protections for data subject to government and industry regulations.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 provides these capabilities and more. The comprehensive solution allows you to securely back up Microsoft 365 data to any location, whether on-premises, with a service provider or on a different cloud instance. The solution gives users more control over their Microsoft 365 data and provides protection against accidental deletion, security threats and retention policy gaps. It also addresses many legal and compliance requirements with efficient e-discovery capabilities.
The latest version of the solution backs up data up to 30 times faster than previous versions, reducing backup windows from hours to minutes and seconds. Multifactor authentication is now being used to boost security, while enhanced data protection reports allow you to identify vulnerable mailboxes and manage license and storage usage more effectively.
Teams Protection
Veeam has also added purpose-built backup and recovery for Microsoft Teams, the team collaboration hub that integrates group chat, video conferencing, storage, file-sharing and more in a unified platform that helps dispersed employees remain connected. More than 115 million people now use Teams on a daily basis, a 475 percent growth since the beginning of 2020.
However, Teams is not a self-contained application — it acts as an abstraction layer that pulls together data from multiple Microsoft applications, creating a data-rich environment that includes everything from text messages, video, images, voice recordings, data files and folders, emails and contact lists. Because this data is scattered throughout the Microsoft 365 environment, backup has always been a tricky process.
Other backup products for the M365 environment only include native support for Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive. While backing up those applications theoretically backed up Teams data, restoring data was problematic because the unique data streams and channels aren’t re-created. Re-creating a Teams conversation or wiki might involve manually finding, copying and pasting restored data into a new file.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 makes it easier than ever for users to back up and restore Teams data. Close integration with a new Microsoft interface allows Veeam to access metadata from all sources within M365 to identify which data points are associated with which groups or channels. This allows the automated backup and recovery of all Teams channels, settings, permissions, applications and tabs, as well as the data within those components.
Cloud-based access to essential business productivity and collaboration applications is essential for the ongoing support of a dispersed workforce, but it also requires a robust data protection strategy. Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 will help you protect and control critical business data stored in the Microsoft cloud.
