Is Backup Necessary For Microsoft OneDrive?

Today, we want to share an experience that unfolded recently with one of our clients. It clearly shows why businesses need a Microsoft 365 backup solution for OneDrive for Business.  

Here’s the story: An employee’s laptop was infected with malware early one morning, causing 1,754 file deletions in Windows Explorer. All the files in question were in a OneDrive for Business shared folder that contained critical information (e.g., contracts, estimates, project records, and proposals).  

How did they turn this situation around?

Thankfully, the client had a backup solution for its OneDrive for business that Wingman Solutions had implemented as part of a backup strategy. This allowed them to recover the data quickly and fully. Our support team restored the deleted files, and the customer was able to recover the affected laptop.  

What about OneDrive for business native backup and recovery tools?

Below is our assessment of what organizations face when they rely solely on native Microsoft 365 tools.  

Mass file deletion notification

Mass file detection is a tool that Microsoft introduced in August 2018 to receive email notifications of mass file detection activity. Thanks to this feature, the issue was detected promptly.  

The recipient of our customer’s notice email initially mistook it for a scam email. It wasn’t until the person examined it more closely that they realized it might be genuine.  

The OneDrive for business recycle bin

When data from SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business is destroyed, it is sent to the Recycle Bin. The Recycle Bin displays a list of the files that have been deleted in the last 90 days. With the press of a button, you can pick one or more files and either delete or restore them.  

You may think this process performs well enough to restore a batch of missing files. Sadly, that’s not the reality.  

We tested our own Recycle Bin and mimicked certain OneDrive for Business deletion scenarios. Our Recycle Bin repair resulted in partial recovery. Approximately 20% of the files were impossible to recover.  

Why?  

Each restore error stated that the file already existed in the specified location. However, we verified some of the files that were causing the problem and found that they were not in the correct position.  

We found that the error details for each file all referenced the same file and location upon closer analysis. Everything was confusing at first, but after further examination, we were able to piece it together. Microsoft’s code batches restore jobs and don’t handle item problems gracefully – if one item in the batch fails, the remaining items in the batch appear to fail as well.  

If you run into this issue, one workaround is to go through the objects in the Recycle Bin, one at a time, performing a manual restore process.  

Unfortunately, none of OneDrive’s native solutions achieve a true, proper backup of your data, and most recovery scenarios are not simple to support.  

How do we ensure that your business’ data is backed up?

To back up Microsoft 365, we use our own backup strategy.  

This provides us with the assurance of having a separate, safe copy of your data that we can utilize to quickly recover items, folders, lists/libraries, and sites as needed.  

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Use Microsoft 365 Defender to protect your business from phishing

Multi-layered protection 

We make sure to scan Microsoft 365 for malicious cyber threats and ensure that complete protection with 3x daily backups and flexible, fast recovery is done. 

Microsoft 365 backup and recovery

We have a solution that protects your valuable data within Microsoft Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, and more. 

This solution offers the following features: 

• Automated, continuous backups: Our package includes automated backups for OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, and more with 3x daily, or perform additional backups as needed, at any time. 
• Fast recovery: Our flexible restore options allow you to recover lost data promptly while retaining the original file and folder structure in Microsoft 365.  

Conclusion: 

Lastly, we’ve seen it happen enough times to know that data deletion caused by human error or criminal intent is a serious threat to enterprises. The problem with most cloud-based applications — such as Microsoft 365 for example — is that they don’t provide true enterprise backup and recovery capabilities. 

Connect with us for a demo to discover more about how to truly protect your cloud collaboration data, including your OneDrive for Business sites.