5 scenarios not covered by Microsoft’s native M365 backup

If I would be standing in a room with 100 IT-managers and I would ask them who uses Microsoft 365, I would probably see 100 people raise their hand. If I would ask the same managers who uses a 3rd party tool to back up their Microsoft 365 environment, how many hands would I see? 50? 20? 5? I’m not sure, but I can tell you it won’t be 100 hands.

Wait, wait, Microsoft takes backups, right?

Well…, yes and no. While Microsoft 365 has a few short-term recoverability options like the Recycle Bin and soft deletion, the support that comes with these is limited. There are many content alterations that cannot be reversed. Additionally, not all content is supported by the Recycle Bin.

Furthermore, you need to ask yourselves who should be in control of your data: Is it you or is it Microsoft? This is an extract of the Services Agreement of Microsoft:

We strive to keep the Services up and running; however, all online services suffer occasional disruptions and outages, and Microsoft is not liable for any disruption or loss you may suffer as a result. In the event of an outage, you may not be able to retrieve Your Content or Data that you’ve stored. We recommend that you regularly backup Your Content and Data that you store on the Services or store using Third-Party Apps and Services.

Basically, this means that Microsoft is responsible for making sure the services are available, but YOU are responsible for your data.

Going back to the limitations of Microsoft’s native M365 backup, here are 5 scenarios where Microsoft doesn’t cover you.

1.   Not everything can be restored

While it is of course possible to restore files that have been changed or which have become corrupted, this only applies to the content of files. What about changes in permissions or in the properties of these files or in the version history? Microsoft doesn’t offer any solution to recover files that have been changed that way, nor in the version history and obviously not in the recycle bin.

2.   Loss of data

Data can get lost in several ways. Typical examples are when an account is deactivated due to the colleague leaving, all data owned by that colleague is permanently deleted. Or hackers use ransomware threatening to adapt or delete your data in a way that’s not covered by Microsoft’s native protection. Your data cannot be restored if these things happen.

3.   Long-term recoverability

Data is only retained for x number of days after deletion (30 days in the recycle bin up to 93 days for SharePoint and OneDrive items), and 3 months in the native backup container. After that period that data is permanently lost. So, you cannot restore data that’s been deleted more than x days ago. And that is if nobody empties the recycle bin before that.

4.   Granular restore

Granularity can be expressed in multiple ways. You can refer to individual files or folders or you can refer to rolling back specific actions you took, or you can even refer to rolling back certain property-changes. Restoring individual files is only possible when these files are in the recycle bin and rolling back certain actions is very hard using Microsoft’s native backup capabilities. Rolling back property changes is not possible without a specific backup tool.

When your file was already removed from the recycle bin, you need to contact Microsoft to restore a backup they took. At that point, you cannot restore a single file anymore but only a collection of content. Meaning you will lose all changes you did to that collection of data during the last x months.

5.   Object-based restores

What if you want to restore data based on certain criteria that data has (properties, characteristics). Microsoft only offers restores based on the specified backup time, but wouldn’t it be useful to also be able to restore data based on let’s say the owner or the parent-folder or any other characteristic? Wouldn’t it be useful to be able to do a search on your backup and select the content you want to restore? 

Final question

When you rely on the backup solution Microsoft offers, do you feel you’re in full control of your data? Including the backups? Do you feel that you can decide what and when data gets backed up or data can get restored. Take your data back into your own hands. Microsoft advises and expects you to do so!