With more people working remotely than ever before, it’s become essential that MSPs offer data protection and security for Microsoft 365—specifically OneDrive for business, which is in widespread use by businesses across the globe. To protect modern customers, MSPs both large and small must have sufficient measures in place to protect customer data in the event data stored with OneDrive is lost or deleted.
Although Microsoft accepts responsibility for the underlying infrastructure of their solutions and focuses on providing system availability, MSPs and user organizations remain responsible for the recoverability and retention of their data. While the built-in security in OneDrive and other Microsoft solutions is better than nothing, native options are often insufficient to provide the confidence and security of full data protection. A backup solution for Microsoft 365 provides MSPs and businesses with the most efficient and effective way of meeting data protection responsibilities. By deploying your own third-party backup solution for Microsoft 365, you can help maintain control over your customers’ Microsoft 365 data and decrease the likelihood of being held liable in the event of disaster.
Reasons why MSPs should back up OneDrive for businesses
To help you understand the importance of offering backup for OneDrive, here is a list of the top three reasons why you might need one.
1. Protection against accidental deletion
Despite increasingly sophisticated technology on the market, any process with an element of human intervention inevitably opens the potential for human error. Accidental deletion is a common error faced by OneDrive users, and one that can have significant consequences for an MSP or business. Accidental deletion accounts for 70% of SaaS data loss. If critical information—such as patient records in the healthcare sector—is lost, this can grind business to a halt and possibly do irreparable damage to a company’s reputation.
Unfortunately, Microsoft 365 and OneDrive don’t always provide the data retention capabilities MSPs require to adequately safeguard their customers’ data. The default recycle bin retention period is limited, which means that if there’s a delay in discovering that something critical has been deleted, this retention period may not be enough to prevent permanent damage from being done. Once the retention period is over, that data will become completely unrecoverable. A backup solution for OneDrive can help your MSP prevent this scenario from affecting customers.
2. Protection against internal threats
While we may like to think the best of people, especially our employees, not everyone is always worthy of that trust. Even if the possibility of human error is mitigated, there is always the chance that a disgruntled or dishonest employee may purposefully put important data at risk. Provided the employee has access to the company OneDrive, this could be achieved simply by secretly deleting sensitive data and quietly waiting for the recycle bin retention period to end. If this happens, your MSP could face serious consequences, with no way to recover critical data that has now been permanently deleted.
Given that OneDrive has no way of recognizing malicious deletion from intentional deletion, there’s no available recourse for data recovery once the recycle bin has been emptied. The only way to protect your data in the face of malicious internal activity (such as purposeful deletion) is through a third-party backup solution.
3. Over-privileged permissions
A key issue with OneDrive is that its file sharing utility can easily create instances of over-privilege. OneDrive makes it easy for you to share folders and files, and these shares are likely to be confined to the permission levels of Design, Edit, or Contribute—which include the power to delete. The issue with this system is that if you’re not reviewing and trimming these privileges on a continuous basis, you’re likely to expose business data to more people than you realize at any given moment. Many of these people may even have the power to delete files. A backup solution for Microsoft 365 helps ensure that if data is deleted or edited due to over-privileged permissions, the original can be easily restored.
Choosing windows server backup software
To protect your OneDrive data, it’s important to regularly back up OneDrive for Business. SolarWinds® Backup is server and workstation backup software that also serves as a Microsoft 365 backup solution, protecting Microsoft 365 SharePoint, Exchange, and OneDrive. This gives you the opportunity to easily add a new data protection service, extending your potential client base and revenue opportunity.
SolarWinds Backup is an intuitive tool that offers users the ability to quickly search for and recover what they need without having to file a support ticket with Microsoft. This tool is manageable from a single, web-based dashboard, allowing you to see and manage backup status across your customers, as well as many device and data types.
This solution helps ensure that Exchange mailboxes are backed up automatically up to six times a day, and backups for OneDrive and SharePoint accounts are performed automatically up to four times a day. By giving you multiple daily restore points, backups are convenient and accurate, allowing you to easily protect customers from risks like accidental deletion and disgruntled employees. Simply choose the restore point you want and execute a rapid recovery.
In short, while OneDrive does provide a secure data storage solution, it can’t necessarily protect your company from accidental deletion, human error, malicious intent, and other circumstances that might result in data loss. To ensure that customer data is truly protected, MSPs need an additional OneDrive backup solution like SolarWinds Backup. A 30-day free trial is available for MSPs interested in learning more.
