Defend · Backups and restore tests
Microsoft 365
Microsoft keeps your Microsoft 365 running. Keeping a copy of it from a chosen day, outside your tenant, is your job, and this is how we do it.
Microsoft runs it. The copy is yours to keep.
Microsoft 365 is built so that it doesn’t go down, and that’s what Microsoft promises. It doesn’t promise you a copy of your mail, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams from a chosen day. Deleted items are kept for a while and then gone; a mailbox whose licence is removed goes after a short grace period; a deletion done with a valid account, by a colleague or by an attacker who signed in, is carried out faithfully. Retention policies keep data from being deleted for a period; they aren’t a copy you can go back to. So we copy your tenant, on a schedule agreed with you, into a backup outside it, where a mistake or an attacker inside the tenant can’t reach.
What we set
What is copied, and what comes back.
The backup covers the whole tenant by default; what your firm wants kept longer than the default is decided with you and goes on record.
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Mailboxes, including shared ones
Every mailbox, the shared ones and the archives, copied on the agreed schedule. A mail deleted on purpose or by an attacker’s inbox rule comes back from the day you choose.
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SharePoint and OneDrive
Every site and every personal drive, with versions. A folder someone emptied, a library a script overwrote or a file encrypted by ransomware is restored to the state before it happened.
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Teams and channels
Teams, channels and the files behind them. A deleted team comes back with its files, not as a shell.
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Restore at any size
One mail, one file, one folder, one mailbox, one site, or the whole lot: restored into its place or next to it, so nobody overwrites what’s still good. The restore test covers a mailbox, a file and a site.
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Long-term mail archiving
Where your firm must keep correspondence for years, mail is archived outside the backup’s normal window, searchable, for the period you’re bound to.
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Leavers’ data kept
When a colleague leaves, their licence goes but their mail and files stay in the backup for the agreed period, so a matter they worked on can still be answered.
On record
On record for Microsoft 365.
- Which mailboxes, sites, drives and teams are in the backup, and how often it runs
- The retention of the backup, and the archiving period for mail
- The date and result of the last restore test: a mailbox, a file, a site
- Where the backup lives, and who can open it
What we find in tenants we take over.
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Retention mistaken for a backup
A retention policy is in place, so everyone thinks there’s a backup. There’s a delay before deletion, and nothing to restore from.
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Shared mailboxes left out
The backup covers user mailboxes. The shared mailbox that holds the firm’s client correspondence was never in it.
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A restore never tried
The backup has run for two years. The first restore finds that it kept the files and lost the permissions, or kept the mail and not the attachments.
Also under Backups and restore tests
Questions we get
Microsoft says our data is safe. Why a backup?
Safe from Microsoft losing it, yes. Not from a colleague deleting a site, an attacker’s inbox rule emptying a mailbox, or a licence removed with the mailbox attached. Microsoft keeps the service running; the copy from a chosen day is your own responsibility, and that’s what the backup is.
How far back can we go?
As far as the retention agreed with you, and for mail as far as your archiving period. Both are written down in your evidence file, so the answer is the same whoever is asked.
Can a single deleted mail be restored without touching anything else?
Yes. A single mail or file goes back into its place, or next to it, without overwriting what’s there. That’s the most common restore, and the one your people ask for on a Monday morning.
Start
What would come back if a mailbox went today?
In a first call we look at what your tenant keeps today, what a retention policy does and doesn’t cover, and what a restore from last month would look like.
- No first level
- No surprises
- Pilot before you buy