Using M365? Make Sure You’re Protected from the Possibility of Data Loss

In the cyber threat landscape, the risk posed to an organisation from email data loss probably doesn’t rank highly for most, but what sort of impact would it have on your business if your email went offline for a day? And beyond your reliance on email as a trusted medium for communication, are people in your organisation using it to store important documents or files, thereby increasing your risk level?  

Worldwide, in organisations large and small, M365 has established itself as one of the top two office productivity software suites, with millions of companies using it in the US and UK markets, according to Statistica. It is undoubtedly highly reliable, forming the cornerstone of internal and external communications for many. Yet, relatively few users are aware of the potential for data loss from M365 that could result from a cyber security breach, malicious internal user activity, inadequate data retention policies, or simply user error. Should email data loss result from any one of these, unless your organisation has secured its data via a backup, the risk of data loss is very high and you’re on your own when it comes to dealing with the issue.  

Think your M365 email data is safe? Think again

Most M365 end-users operate under the false assumption that their email data is safe, and can be retrieved by IT teams, should the need arise. Yet Microsoft itself offers no such guarantees, making it clear that data backup policies and their implementation are the customer’s responsibility. That’s not to overstate the threat of email data loss, as M365 data is kept very safe, through replication in Microsoft data centres in Europe, the US and other locations worldwide. But the point that needs to be understood is that data replication and storage in data centres, and data retention policies are two separate things. Data retention policies are set by the customer’s IT team and in most cases, because of the sheer and ever-increasing volumes of data that need to be stored, it can’t all be retained on a permanent basis. 

If your organisation is a large enterprise, you may well be aware of this, with email data retention policies having been made clear by IT teams. However, even major companies can find themselves in trouble on this issue. Last year, JPMorgan Chase was fined $4 million by the US Securities and Exchange Commission after 47 million emails belonging to its retail banking group were mistakenly and permanently deleted.

Awareness of the pitfalls of email data retention is generally lower in smaller and medium sized (SME) organisations. It’s a real and underestimated issue that threatens the vast majority of SMEs. It becomes an even more serious problem if you’re working in a regulated industry, where there are requirements to retain all data for up to seven years – including emails. 

Understanding the nature of email data loss risk

Typically, employees of SMEs first encounter this issue when they attempt to retrieve a lost email and are unable to do so. At that point, they’re likely to seek the support of their IT team, only to find the email has been permanently deleted. If the message contained an attachment that wasn’t saved to a file storage system, it’s an even more painful experience. While enterprise management are usually aware of the potential for this issue, that knowledge often doesn’t filter through to all staff. 

Wider potential for data loss

Of course, M365 is more than an email client, with many users taking advantage of its SharePoint and OneDrive data storage capabilities. These carry their own risks of inadvertent data loss, usually resulting from a user accidentally deleting a file. The end result is the same though, with potentially serious data loss for the organisation. 

A simple, inexpensive data backup solution for M365 

The good news is that the potential for M365 email and other data loss can be easily avoided through a robust and cost-effective solution designed by Assured Data Protection (Assured). The Rubrik M365 Managed Backup solution gives organisations the ability to securely protect, recover, and archive their M365 suite utilising Rubrik’s Zero Trust Data Security. It is built on Rubrik’s Security Cloud, managed by Assured and can be installed within a matter of hours. Customers can benefit from an added layer of protection from ransomware attacks and through rapid recovery of Exchange Online, SharePoint and OneDrive data within three clicks, all managed through a single intuitive dashboard.

Download our latest guide here to discover how Assured’s cloud backup for M365 solution can protect your data.