3 Reasons to Backup Office 365
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Microsoft 365 — still better known by its former name, Office 365 — is an excellent productivity solution for small and medium-sized businesses. Beyond its versatility and ease of use, many companies choose Microsoft 365 precisely because it offers advanced security features.
Your valuable data will, Microsoft says, be safeguarded from cyber attacks. So why would you need to back your data up locally? There is no good reason not to backup Office 365 — and plenty to take this vital step. Here’s a look at three reasons you may not have considered.
Supply Chain Attacks Lead to Data Loss
In a supply chain attack, malicious actors track down vulnerable and unprotected code, infrastructure, networks, and practices. Once they find a suitable vector, they get to work on injecting their malicious code into the product — and skilled hackers do so in a way that is likely to go unnoticed for at least some time.
Microsoft Office 365 and Azure cloud services are, with more than 250 million active users all over the globe, a rather obvious target. However, according to a 2021 Vectra survey, around 10% of machines are especially vulnerable, and over 70% of companies have suffered at least some account takeovers.
Once a supply chain attack is successful, data breaches and financial losses are among the most devastating consequences. However, these losses can be prevented by maintaining clean and sandboxed Microsoft 365 backups.
Global System Attacks Initiated by State Actors
Foreign nation-state actors may not have any ambition of taking down your business’ Microsoft 365 systems and may, depending on the nature of your venture, have little interest in your data. But, on the other hand, State-sponsored hackers do very much have their sights set on Microsoft itself — including Microsoft 365.
In an increasingly unstable world marked by global tensions fought out on a brave new virtual front, hackers sponsored by nation-states could down Office 365 services at any time. Such attacks are unlikely to last very long, but when Office 365 returns, your data may be gone. Unless, of course, you make regular Office 365 backups.
Do you not want to go down that particular frightening — though not unrealistic — rabbit hole? Keep in mind that something less malicious could have similarly devastating consequences: power outages. Big ones already affected European Microsoft 365 users in September and October 2020, and it could happen again.
Internal Attacks Could Devastate Your System
Cyber attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication, and every company should, regardless of its size, be aware of the threat of ransomware attacks and other cyber threats. However, the most successful attacks are those carried out from the inside. It only takes one tech-savvy but disgruntled worker to do severe damage to your data from within. Unless you have Office 365 backed up locally and securely, frightening amounts of data could be lost forever due to an internal attack.
Microsoft 365 backups represent a fail-safe every company should put in place for these reasons and countless others.
