So, should you backup Office 365 data? Short answer: Yes. There are many reasons for this, but we will boil them down to the main three:

1. To comply with laws and regulations.

2. To prevent data from loss and corruption.

3. To avoid the expenses on downtime in case of disaster.

The cost of data loss may reach millions of dollars. Despite Microsoft’s advanced security features, data loss is often an occurrence in their users’ ranks. There are many reasons behind data loss: external threats, accidental data deletion, and more. Your company needs to keep its vital data secure to avoid financial and reputational risks. Such risks are one of the key concerns expressed by our customers when considering our backup.

Office 365 doesn’t back up your data fully to protect it. And here the proof.

Should You Backup Office 365 Data?

And most importantly, why do you need Microsoft Office 365 backup? The following five reasons may have you convinced that if you want to be compliant and be able to quickly restore your information, native O365 functionality is not enough.

1. Disruptions and outages of Microsoft services may lead to downtime and data loss

Against popular belief, power outages and service disruptions due to hardware or software failure aren’t that unusual for cloud giants like Microsoft. For example, the Microsoft outages in September and October 2020 heavily affected many European regions by causing massive downtime for companies.

If something happens from Microsoft’s side, you won’t be able to reach your data and continue working unless you have a backup. A Ponemon Institute report says that such downtime can cost an SMB company $8,000 to $74,000 per hour. The worst-case scenario is, if the servers are heavily affected by the disruption, you may never be able to get your data back.

In a document called the Microsoft services agreement, you can find pretty clear statements that in case of outages or disruptions, Microsoft is not responsible for your data:

2. Office 365 account deletion leads to the deletion of all the data on that accountDeleting O365 accounts is quite a standard procedure in companies. There are many instances when an O365 account can be deleted:
To save money on licenses when an employee leavesTo migrate data to another account or data management suiteAs the result of license services endingAs a result of negligent accidental account deletionAs a result of intentional (malicious) account deletionRegardless of the reasons behind the account deletion, the outcome for you will stay the same: the account data will be erased forever.
Microsoft addresses this possibility in their services agreement and recommends their users to regularly back up their data if they want to access it after the account deletion.
3. Native Office 365 backup & recovery tools’ capabilities are limitedDoes Microsoft backup Office 365 data? Well, yes and no.
Office 365 allows you to recover deleted items. However, the native Office 365 recovery tools are quite limited. The basic recovery from Deleted Items helps with recent accidentally deleted emails, but what about other cases? Long-deleted or purged files, corrupted mailboxes, items lost due to cyber attacks or incorrect migrations – these are just a few things Microsoft will not help you to restore. Here are the limitations of the native recovery:
Recovery is time-limited. Office 365 retention time is quite limited. By default, the items are kept around for up to 30 days (14 days by default). Moreover, the purged items will be lost. However, you might need to restore your long deleted files and emails. For example, for compliance or reporting purposes. That’s why you’ll need an Office 365 email backup.
No point-in-time recovery. Let’s say your mailbox has got corrupted, and the version history is turned off. Your data becomes lost forever as there is no way to choose the “clean” version and restore it. This is possible only if you backup your Office 365 mailbox. 
Recovery is overcomplicated. Unlike professional backup software, O365 is not a one-click solution. For example, Office 365 recovery via In-Place eDiscovery & Hold has many conditions and steps that are too time-consuming and still not always helpful.Office 365 doesn’t follow user data backup best practices. There is a basic rule of a safe backup. It’s called the 3-2-1 rule. According to this practice, three backups should be stored on two media, with at least one off-site copy. Yet, Microsoft stores cloud backup data in the same cloud as the source data. To put it simply, the data copy in the Microsoft cloud is vulnerable to the same threats as the data it backs up. Of course, it makes the security of your data incomplete. But Office 365 is not a backup service, so it isn’t supposed to follow the best backup practices.

Also, to know more about Office 365 Migration Services or Migrate Exchange 2013 to Exchange Online, visit O365CloudExperts.