Why You Need a Third-Party Backup Solution – Even in Microsoft 365 

As a Microsoft Services Partner, we’ve helped organizations of all sizes migrate to Microsoft 365 and Azure to take advantage of powerful collaboration tools, cloud scalability, and robust security. However, one critical gap continues to surprise many IT teams: Microsoft does not provide traditional data backup — which is why a third-party backup solution is essential for full data protection.

Microsoft Offers Retention – Not Backup

Yes, Microsoft does offer incredible platform reliability, robust version history, retention policies, and infrastructure redundancy. For some organizations, they determine that this level of retention is enough for them. However, these features do not provide comprehensive, long-term data backup. The current best practice recommendation is to have a third-party data backup system to protect your data. 

Many folks don’t know that this recommendation comes directly from Microsoft. Microsoft follows a shared responsibility model, which means they’re responsible for uptime and availability of their services, while you — the customer — are responsible for the protection and long-term retention of your data. 

This distinction is essential. While Microsoft does provide short-term retention and limited recovery tools (like the recycle bin or version history), they don’t protect against accidental deletions that go unnoticed for months. They also don’t cover ransomware, insider threats, or full account takeovers.

The Role of Third-Party Backup Solutions

That’s where third-party cloud backup solutions come in. 

These platforms are purpose-built to protect Microsoft 365 services like Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. They offer automated, regular backups stored in separate, secure environments — completely independent from Microsoft’s own cloud. If disaster strikes, you can easily restore emails, files, chats, or even entire user accounts within minutes. 

More advanced solutions also cover endpoints, servers, and virtual machines, making them ideal for hybrid environments. They provide centralized management, customizable retention policies, audit-ready reporting, and secure data encryption — all essential for maintaining compliance and business continuity. 

Microsoft clearly recommends using a third-party backup solutions for full data protection. In its Services Agreement, Microsoft emphasizes that while they ensure service availability, they are not liable for data loss and do not back up customer content. 

In our experience, the risks of not using a third-party backup solution are too great to ignore. Consider these common scenarios: 

• An employee accidentally deletes a critical folder in SharePoint and it goes unnoticed for over 90 days — beyond Microsoft’s default retention window. 

• A ransomware attack encrypts all files in OneDrive and SharePoint. Without external backups, recovery could take days or weeks, if it’s even possible. 

• A former employee maliciously deletes Teams conversations or emails — and they’re gone before anyone realizes. 

All of these risks are avoidable with the right third-party backup system in place. 

The cost of implementing backup software is modest. It’s far less than the potential losses from downtime, lost intellectual property, legal issues, or damage to your reputation. Backup is not just about protecting files — it’s about ensuring your business can recover quickly, meet compliance obligations, and maintain trust with customers and stakeholders. 

Take Action to Protect Your Data

If you have been currently relying solely on Microsoft’s native features to safeguard your data, now is the time to rethink your strategy. Fill out the form below and one of our team members will reach out to talk about next steps for protecting your corporate data.