How to Back up Microsoft 365 SharePoint Online

According to Microsoft, over 2,50,000 organizations use SharePoint, including 85% of Fortune 500 companies. Widespread adoption of SharePoint by businesses also means there is an increase in risk of data loss due to a wide variety of reasons.

Microsoft’s terms of service clearly states that Microsoft is not responsible for backing up your SharePoint data. Don’t take our word for it; here is an extract from their terms of service.

Case : A way to organize data and restrict the held data to a certain set of users.

Hold : Protects important data from user modifications or deletions.

Search : Lets the administrator search for specific data.

Export : Exports the discovered data as a .pst file.

Case and Hold options are used to back up your SharePoint data while Search and Export options are used to search and export the data held by the user.

Third-party cloud backup applications like SysCloud offer a fully automated cloud-to-cloud backup and restore service. SysCloud uses industry-standard cloud storage infrastructure with military-grade security.

1. Account Deletion Keep a safe copy of organizational data even after the user accounts are deleted. This happens mostly during employee exits, thus saves on license costs.

2. Access Data During Outages Access your SharePoint data via the online backup service even when Microsoft 365 suffers an outage, which is not very uncommon.

3. Saves Time Save time in managing backup for large teams.

4. Added-Security Gain added data security with increased admin control and in-built protection for ransomware attacks.

5. Automatic/ Scheduled Backup Schedule automated backups multiple times during the day.

1. Data Loss from Ransomware Attacks: Bitdefender’s Mid-Year Threat Landscape Report 2020 announced a seven-fold spike in the number of ransomware attacks in 2020 when compared to 2019. In the event of a ransomware attack, SharePoint users who do not have an off-site backup could loss critical data.

2. User Errors: According to Data Center Knowledge, 70 percent of data loss incidents are caused by accidental deletions. These can occur when employees in your organization (a) accidentally delete important files while trying to free up storage space(b) end up removing the original version of a file while trying to get rid of duplicates Such errors are hard to prevent and it would be impossible to restore the data past the default retention period.

3. Internal Threats: Steve Durbin, Managing Director of the Information Security Forum explains that the massive shift to a work from home model (as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic) may cause employees to become disgruntled or resentful due to lowered remuneration, reduced promotion opportunities and uncertainty about the future.A disgruntled employee could permanently delete critical business data.

4. Business Continuity in the Event of SaaS Outages: According to CRN, on 7th October 2020, Microsoft servers suffered outage for the third time in 10 days. The incident follows a five-hour outage on September 28 and a four-hour outage on October 1.Backing up your SharePoint files can help you access them even if SharePoint is not available in the event of an outage which is not very uncommon.

5.Limitations of Native Retention Settings: The native retention settings offered by Microsoft do not serve as an effective data recovery option. This is because the deleted files are:(a) only retained for 93 days from the time you delete them, beyond which they are permanently lost.(b) stored along with your live account data. In the event of a ransomware attack, all your Microsoft 365 data is compromised, including the retention copies.Having an independent backup of your data stored off-site is an effective bulwark against such data loss incidents.

6. Legal Compliance and Litigation Purposes: Most companies are required to comply with several state and federal regulations. A backup strategy can help in supporting compliance requirements.

Backup is just the first step in securing your business data. The ability to recover permanently deleted SharePoint files is also critical for Microsoft 365 administrators. Read our in-depth article to learn the different ways in which you can recover deleted SharePoint files.

1. How do I back up my SharePoint to an external drive?

2. How do I download all files from SharePoint to my PC?

Step 3: In the top navigation, select Download. You can also right click on one of the files and select Download. All the files will be downloaded to your computer in .zip format. 

3. Does Microsoft back up SharePoint Online?

No, Microsoft doesn’t back up your SharePoint data. It is clearly stated in their terms of service that they are not responsible for any data loss due to negligence or malicious activities, and they recommend backing up your Microsoft 365 data including SharePoint files using third-party apps.

4. How do I move a subsite to another site in SharePoint?

Step 1: Log in to Microsoft 365 admin center.

Step 2: Navigate to Admin centers section and select SharePoint.

Step 3:  In the SharePoint admin center, go to  Active Sites. This will enlist all the active sites in your SharePoint account. Click on the url of the site from which you want to move the contents to another site.

Step 4: After opening the site, click Site contents. 

Step 5: The Site contents section displays all the content and subsites of the current site. Click the Subsites option.

Step 6: Navigate to the desired subsite -> click the Show actions icon -> Site contents.

Step 7: Select the document -> select any folder item and click the Move to option.

You can see the migration in progress. Once the migration is complete, the status of the progress changes to Done . You can go to the destination site and confirm the  migration.

5. How many days SharePoint Online sites are backed up?

According to Microsoft, SharePoint Online retains backups of all content for 14 additional days beyond actual deletion. If content cannot be restored via the Recycle Bin or Files Restore, an administrator can contact Microsoft Support to request a restore any time inside the 14 day window.

6. Where is SharePoint Online data stored?