A lot of businesses and individuals have taken up Office 365.
On the surface there’s a lot to like:
- automatic software updates,
- access to the latest versions of key business applications,
- predictable monthly payments,
- cloud storage,
- easy access to mobile and Cloud versions of key Office software
And that’s naming just five!
As Microsoft Silver Partners, we sell a lot of Office 365 licenses and administer hundreds of copies of it for our clients.
But back in the day
You might have had your own server in your office, managing and hosting your email. If you were like the majority of independent businesses, it was probably running Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS, which used Exchange as well).
You were also, probably, making regular backups (and if you weren’t you knew that you should have been!) to counter any failures and disasters. Those would have included all your emails.
This brave new cloud
Now, if you’re running Office 365, your email “server” is in the Microsoft Cloud. That’s great for reliability, availability and ideal for security updates, but what you may not know is that your email folders are not backed up. And that’s not the whole story, either.
If an email or calendar item is deleted (deliberately or otherwise), or a contact removed, you’d think you can always recover it from your Deleted? Items folder. But you’d be wrong. After a relatively short period of time, Microsoft will automatically remove it. At that point it’s gone for good!
It might be even worse than that: If emails are maliciously deleted, if there’s a system failure, or if your network gets hacked or suffers a ransomware attack, you might find yourself in serious trouble.
Depending on the nature of the loss, you could be in trouble with your clients, your suppliers, your own personnel, and even, simultaneously, with the law. Under the present Data Protection Act and the coming General Data Protection Act (GDPR) (see our blog post on the key things you need to know about GDPR), you have an increasingly stringent duty to properly and securely manage and control data.
Our Cloud Backup to the rescue!
This is a simple-to-deploy and inexpensive solution: our cloud backup support for Office 365 provides the “off-site” backup and email archiving that is essential for data protection. It secures all your mailbox contents, and completely protects your cloud data. Regain the peace of mind that comes from knowing your data is safe!
Our solution enables you to:
- control your backups,
- centrally view all activities,
- receive alerts relating to any issues or problems.
Our solution is very flexible. You can backup your mailboxes, contacts and calendar data to:
- a folder on your PC, laptop or Server,
- any cloud storage from Bristol IT Company,
- to Microsoft Azure,
- to Amazon S3,
- to IBM Bluemix (formerly SoftLayer),
- to any other private Cloud storage platform that you use.
Configuring our Office 365 backup is extremely simple: it automatically syncs with each Office 365 configuration and automatically includes new mailboxes as you create them. Instant data recovery has never been easier.
You can find, preview and retrieve your emails by:
- Subject
- To and From
- Sent and Received dates
- specific attachments
You can easily restore individual emails, attachments, contacts, calendars and tasks, without the need for helpdesk intervention (although obviously we’re there if you need us!) and your data is safely protected in a Tier IV, SSAE Certified, datacentre with AES-256 encryption. This means that your backup data will have excellent protection, well in excess of what’s expected to comply with legal requirements.
So, if the security of your Office 365 solution is causing you sleepless nights, or even if you’ve only just realised you’re not backing up your emails, get in touch. Give us a call on 0117 370 0777 or contact us via our online form.
