Cloud services are on the rise these days. Due to this most of us have our data stored on the cloud. It does have its perks like being able to access your data from everywhere in the world. But it is always good to be on the safer side and have a backup of our own. In this article, we are going to discuss some of the Office 365 Backup best practices to follow to ensure that Office 365 data is kept safe.
Let us now look at some of the best practices we can do.
Microsoft 365 Backup Best Practices
As we have mentioned having a backup is important for our safety. This gives you the security that your data is safe and if something does go wrong. Then you can always easily restore your account.
Backup Frequencies
One of the best Office 365 backup practices is setting an optimal backup frequency. It is an essential part to be taken seriously when setting up the backing up of Office 365 accounts. Performing backups less frequently from each other does cause issues. Like in case of a data loss the recovered data will not have the latest contents/ changes. At the same time backing up very frequently can fill up your storage quickly.
Hence it is important that we pick out the correct interval for making backups. If you are a frequent user of Office 365 and rely on it heavily then we recommend you make a backup every day to have the most recent version of the data in case of a data loss. But if you are the kind of user that uses Office 365 occasionally. Then you can probably get away with backing up every 2 weeks or every month depending on how much storage you can allocate for it.
The 3-2-1 Rule
Another one of the rules followed in the business industry is the 3-2-1 rule. What this rule suggests is that an organization should have three copies of its data at three different places.
The first one should be the original copy of the data on the server. The second copy should be on a Network attached storage. And finally, the last one should be on a physical disc that is kept offsite. These three layers of copies ensure the most protection of data for the company.
Changing Retention Policies
The amount of time Microsoft holds on your data on their server even after you have deleted it is called the retention time. It is important to set these retention settings on your Office 365 account to make sure data isn’t lost accidentally. Microsoft keeps the data for 93 days before they are deleted from the server once you have moved them to the bin. The users must also be aware that if the total amount of files present in the recycle bin are automatically deleted if 50% of their storage quota is used by the user.
Talking the Right Security Measures
It is also important to know how and where we back up and save the files. We have to make sure the files are secure and aren’t affected by any external cause. For instance, if we are making a backup file of Office 365, then it is not a good idea to save these backup files in OneDrive storage.
Software Selection
One of the best Office 365 backup best practices that we should take care of is selecting the best tool for backing up Office365. The tool/software that we use has a big role in determining how good and smooth the backup process will be. Using the manual method is not recommended since it can be very complex for many users and, there is the chance of data loss if the user fails the backup process.
There are also a lot of limitations when using manual methods. SysTools Office 365 Backup & Restore Software is the best tool out there in the industry. It has one of the best track records and is recommended and preferred by IT professionals.
Let us now look at how we can use this tool.
Steps to use the tool
- Run the program after getting it.
- From the setup page, we have to select the source and destination. Select Office 365 and Outlook respectively.
- Now under the workload section select the categories of files you want to backup.
- Apply a date filter as per your need if required.
- Now move to the source tab by clicking on the source button on the left.
- From the source menu enter the admin email address and the application id.
- Now validate the required permissions and click on the next button.
- Open the destination tab and specify a destination to save the PST backup file.
- Also, select the maximum size of the PST files.
- Validate the required permission and click on the next button.
- Go to the user tab next. Here there are 3 methods that you can use to get the details of the users from the source.
- Select the Fetch user option to automatically fetch the users from the source. Or you can manually import the users by downloading the template and making a CSV file that contains the details of the same.
- Once done the details of the users are listed in the tool.
- Click on the validate button to validate the required permissions.
- Finally, once everything is done click on the start backup button to start the process.
You can download the summary report after the process is complete. This report can be used to verify that all the files are backed up.
Also read: How to Import PST to Office 365 Without Duplicates?
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed some of the best Office 365 backup practices. We have seen the importance of the software that we use to back up Office 365 data. Hence for the best experience, we recommend using the above-mentioned tool.
