No, Microsoft Office 365 Litigation Hold Does Not Backup your Data - Element Four (2024)

Microsoft’s Security and Compliance Center is designed for organizations to meet the demands of litigation and legal compliance. While it may be what an organization needs to meet legal compliance—it will not allow you to rapidly restore data that is lost due to accident or intention. In fact, it is nearly impossible to restore an entire mailbox from Litigation Hold.

When following Microsoft’s recovery instructions—it takes 15 minutes to restore two emails from a mailbox on litigation hold. Following this calculation—we estimate that it would take 52 days to fully restore a user mailbox with 10,000 emails.

Dangerous Misconceptions About Disaster Recovery & O365 Litigation Hold

There is no getting around it—the only way to adequately protect Office 365 data is by utilizing a third-party backup and recovery software.

While it is true that Microsoft’s 0365 Litigation Hold keeps a copy of user data, it is not an alternative to O365 backup. Many organizations believe that they can leverage O365 litigation hold as a sort of backup. This is a dangerous misconception that can place a company’s data at risk.

Backup Software is Designed for Rapid Restoration

Backup software has a different purpose than Litigation Hold or archive software. Backup software makes a copy of production data and keeps it available so that the copy can be rapidly returned to production if it is needed. This differs greatly from Litigation Hold, which is a business process. Using Litigation Hold for an entire organization puts an organization at risk for overexposure and legal discovery.

Avert Irreversible Data Loss on O365 with Veeam

Veeam Backup and Recovery for O365 allows companies to take control of their organization’s Office 365 data. It helps companies reduce the time and effort needed to find and restore email data, protects against data loss scenarios that are not covered by Microsoft, and facilitates the migration of email data between Office 365 and on-premises Exchange.

Accidental deletion, retention policy gaps & confusion, internal & external security threats, and legal compliance requirements all can cause significant and irreversible data loss on an Office 365 platform. These threats are common occurrences— meaning that Office 365 backup should be a critical part of every company’s disaster recovery plan.

Explore options here:https://www.element-4.com/microsoft-o365-backups/