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5 Reasons to Backup Microsoft Teams

Over the course of the COVID pandemic, most offices have switched to remote work. To accommodate this new situation, the companies that have made this switch needed to rely on online work environments to function effectively. One of the most popular choices for online work is Microsoft Teams. Office 365 includes a version of Microsoft Teams as a part of its subscription model. Since many companies already relied on Microsoft 365 features such as OneDrive or ShareFlow, Microsoft Teams had rapidly increased its user base.

Why you should backup Microsoft Teams

The increased popularity of this SaaS solution, however, comes with an increased risk of data loss and potential disaster, including ransomware, malware, or even simple things like human error. Because of these threats, you should consider backing up the data if your company relies on using Microsoft Teams for internal communication. The terms of service agreement of Office 365 explicitly states that Microsoft is not responsible for any potential data loss resulting from a disaster. Although Microsoft Teams relies on the cloud to store its data, additional backups should still be used as an extra security measure. While the cloud retains your data, as well as previous versions of modified important files, if something goes wrong and your data is lost or deleted, the cloud storage by itself is not enough to guarantee protection. Here are five reasons you should consider backing up your data stored in Microsoft Teams today.

5 Reasons to Backup Microsoft Teams

• Accidental Deletion – Human error remains one of the leading causes of serious data loss and other types of disasters. Microsoft Office 365 allows users two deletion methods: soft and hard. Data from teams which has been soft deleted can generally be found in the recoverable items folder. This is much more difficult if a piece of data was hard deleted. This means that any easily recoverable traces of that piece of data are now gone from the workload, and restoring them without an external backup would be difficult or, in some cases, impossible. While the native tools make it much easier to recover data in Office 356, Teams can benefit from further backup methods, which can help you retrieve any data which has been accidentally subjected to hard deletion.

• Increased independence – While considering various backup methods and policies, it is important to keep in mind that for their own safety as well as increased freedom, any organization should always strive to remain as independent in their data backup as possible. Although data lost in Teams can often be recovered with office 365 tools that rely on cloud storage for backup, having extra backups of important information can let you stay safe in situations where native data security tools fail. Not having to rely on Office 365 and its data recovery features allow you much greater freedom in what type of data will exactly be backed up and when. This is particularly useful while using Microsoft Teams, which can be utilized to share different types of data between users, such as text, sound, or images. Storing your own independent backups allows you to select the most important data and keep it backed up in case of an emergency while at the same time not having to dig through heaps of potentially irrelevant data.

Storware offers unparalleled freedom of choice while designing backup for Microsoft 365 applications, including Microsoft Teams. With Storware Backup and Recovery you can easily store your M365 backups in multiple backup destinations including file system and object storage – learn more.

• Increased recovery time and lower risk of data loss – In a situation where your Office 365 environment has been subject to an attack or any other possible threat having several different backups can greatly reduce the downtime. Still, they can also help you mitigate any potential data loss stored within Microsoft Teams. In case of a disaster, most recovery strategies rely on several different backups to be able to restore the lost information with as little data loss as possible. Because of this, it would be dangerous to rely only on the security tools provided natively by Office 365. Teams having its own outside backup can help you ensure that in case of any potentially threatening event, your organization will be able to restore the data with as little loss as possible.

• Information compliance – Depending on what type of data your organization is storing and working with, you might have to comply with a number of legal policies and regulations regarding information storage. In some cases, your organization must also hold external data backups and the native cloud storage for backup offered by Microsoft Office 365. If your company is working with sensitive data over Microsoft teams, having an individual backup can ensure additional security of that data while at the same time helping you adhere to online security legislation.

• Corrupted third-party apps – Lastly, while using Microsoft Teams for internal communications, many organizations also rely on several third-party apps, such as Slack or Salesforce, to boost their creativity and use functions that might not be available natively in Office 365. However, using these third-party apps opens your Microsoft Teams workload to different security threats. These apps can be outdated, making them a great target for various attacks, or they can also cause other issues such as an accidental files or user deletion. If data gets lost this way, Microsoft is not responsible for problems caused by third-party apps, and therefore relying on the native Office 365 security tools might prove difficult. Remember to store your data in additional backups if you and your organization use third-party applications with your Microsoft Teams.

With the tremendous increase in popularity of various online work environments, it is more important than ever to focus on the possible safety issues and other security threats that might affect remote work. If your organization is using Microsoft Teams, Office 365 native security tools might not be enough to guarantee the safety of your data. If you want to improve your Teams security, consider performing additional data backups in case of potential disasters.

In the video below, you can find out how Storware approaches data protection for the M365. If you have more questions – contact us.

text written by:

Paweł Piskorz, Presales Engineer at Storware