If you think about how much business-critical information is residing within your Microsoft 365 environment – Microsoft Exchange emails and calendar events, Microsoft Teams chats and shared docs, SharePoint presentations, OneDrive files – it seems absurd that organisations would not take steps to ensure that this information was fully backed up and available in the event of an incident.
The thing is, if those organisations assume that Microsoft are taking care of this, they may not realise there is a problem until an incident occurs, by which time it is too late.
Microsoft’s Shared Responsibility Model only provides assurances in terms of the availability and security of the infrastructure. The responsibility for backing up your data that resides within that still falls upon you.
Malware and ransomware pose a major threat to businesses worldwide and the problem continues to escalate. The increase in remote working has also exacerbated the problem, with more attack vectors available to those wishing to do harm to your business, steal your valuable IP, or demand money in exchange for unblocking access to your critical apps.
Ask yourself how your business would cope without access to your files, emails, and other communications for days on end, and what the cost of that would be to your organisation.
Once you do, the need to take steps to ensure that doesn’t happen comes into sharp focus.
