Microsoft 365 is highly resilient, but resilience is not the same as a recovery plan tailored to your organisation. You remain responsible for deciding what must be recoverable, how far back recovery should go and how quickly operations need to resume.
Start with the recovery requirement
List the mailboxes, SharePoint sites, Teams-connected files and OneDrive accounts that matter. Define acceptable data loss and downtime. A short recycle-bin window may be adequate for one scenario and completely inadequate for another.
Understand the available controls
Microsoft 365 includes service resilience, versioning, recycle bins and retention capabilities. Microsoft also offers Microsoft 365 Backup for protected Exchange mailboxes, OneDrive accounts and SharePoint sites. Third-party products may add different retention, export or management options.
Design for realistic incidents
Test recovery from accidental deletion, malicious deletion, ransomware, a compromised administrator and the departure of a key staff member. Include permissions and metadata in the test—not only whether a file can be downloaded.
- Document what is protected and excluded
- Separate backup administration from daily administration
- Protect administrators with strong MFA
- Monitor backup failures and policy changes
- Run and record restore tests
Make the decision deliberately
A useful backup strategy is based on risk, legal and contractual obligations, data volume and recovery objectives. Do not assume that either a cloud subscription or a backup product automatically satisfies those needs.
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General information only. It is not legal, privacy or compliance advice; requirements should be assessed for your organisation.