Everything You Need to Know about Microsoft Exchange Online Backup

Article Summary

Microsoft Exchange Online is a critical business tool for email communication, collaboration, and task management. However, it is vulnerable to data loss from cyberattacks, accidental deletions, and system failures. While Microsoft provides some built-in protection features, they have limitations that make third-party backup solutions essential for comprehensive data security and compliance.

Microsoft Exchange Online Backup Key Takeaways

• Microsoft’s native protection features have limitations – Deleted Items recovery is time-limited, retention policies lack secondary copies, and eDiscovery holds are not designed for long-term retention.
• Cyber threats and human errors can cause data loss – Exchange Online is vulnerable to malware, ransomware, and accidental deletions, making backups crucial.
• Third-party backups provide superior security – Cloud-to-cloud solutions like SpinBackup offer tamper-proof copies, fast recovery, granular restore options, and compliance-ready features.
• Regular backup best practices improve data security – Scheduling daily backups, testing restorations, enforcing security policies, and educating employees can minimize risks.
• SpinBackup’s Microsoft Exchange Online Backup offers an all-in-one solution – With automated 1x/3x backups, encryption, flexible retention, and ransomware recovery, SpinBackup ensures business continuity for just $3/user/month.

Contrary to popular belief, email is not dead.

Used by more than 4 billion users worldwide, email allows users to easily communicate with others, share ideas and opinions, resolve conflicts, and build mutually beneficial relationships. Of course, to achieve these results, a reliable email messaging platform plays a vital role.

One such platform is Microsoft Exchange Online.

If your organization relies on Microsoft Exchange Online for email communication, collaboration, and tasks management you likely store a lot of business-critical information within it.

What if:

• Some information is accidentally deleted?
• There’s a ransomware attack that stops users from accessing Exchange data?
• A hardware failure or natural disaster disrupts Exchange service availability?

Any of these incidents can be catastrophic to your business. To avoid such catastrophes, backing up Exchange data is crucial.

So how can you reliably backup and protect your Exchange Online data?

Read this guide to Microsoft Exchange Online backup to discover the answer.

Understanding Microsoft Exchange Online Data Types and Threats

Any Exchange mailbox can hold email messages, contacts, calendar items, and notes. It may also hold data from other cloud-based apps, including:

• Tasks or “to-dos”
• Forms and responses to forms
• Microsoft Copilot activity data
• Teams conversations
• Skype for Business conversation
• Interactive presentations and reports
• Conversations and comments in Viva Engage communities

Unfortunately, the Microsoft Exchange Online platform continues to be plagued by vulnerabilities that could lead to:

• Remote Code Execution (RCE)
• Server hijacking
• Email interception
• Backdoors
• Malware and ransomware deployment

Any of these incidents could lead to grave data losses for any organization, including yours.

For example, In March 2024, security researchers found that a privilege escalation vulnerability in Exchange Server could allow attackers to steal users’ credentials and then exploit these credentials to gain certain privileges in Exchange Server and steal sensitive or business-critical data.

Earlier, in May and June 2023, some state-sponsored cyberattackers successfully compromised the Exchange mailboxes of over 500 individuals worldwide, including U.S. government representatives involved in critical national security matters. This espionage-driven intrusion event was serious enough to warrant the release of a full-fledged cautionary report by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Unfortunately, cyberattacks and data breaches are not the only threats to Exchange data loss. You can also lose your data due to accidental deletions, human errors, hardware failures, and natural disasters. Regardless of the cause, such losses can seriously disrupt business operations and put you at risk of financial losses, regulatory fines, customer churn, and reputational damage.

Native Protection Features in Microsoft Exchange Online and their Limitations

Microsoft uses multiple technologies to enhance data protection and availability in Exchange Online. These include:

Deleted Items and Recoverable Items Folders

Deleted emails, calendar items, and tasks are stored in the Deleted Items folder of Exchange mailboxes. Items that are deleted from this folder automatically move to the Recoverable Items folder. To recover these “soft” deleted items, users can use the Recover Deleted Items feature in Outlook or Outlook on the web.

Retention Policies and Labels

Retention policies and retention labels for Exchange mailboxes can help organizations to mitigate the risk of data deletions and theft. They can also enable them to proactively comply with regulations that require data retention for a specific minimum period of time.

eDiscovery In-place Holds and Litigation Holds

Microsoft’s eDiscovery tools allow organizations to create holds on Exchange mailboxes in order to preserve their content for eDiscovery investigations. When an admin places any content location on hold, the content within it is preserved until they remove the location from the hold or delete the hold.

These native features in Microsoft Exchange can be useful. However, they also come with several limitations.

For one, all data recovery activities in the Recoverable Items folder must be initiated within 14 days (30 days if the admin has modified the retention period). Once this period elapses, the deleted item is permanently removed and can no longer be recovered. Furthermore, the folder is subject to quotas. Once the quota limit is reached, users cannot delete items. Items will also be deleted automatically, hindering recovery in case of an unexpected event.

Retention policies and eDiscovery holds are also not sufficient to prevent data losses due to malicious attacks or accidental deletions. This is because they only help to retain data copies in the same location as the primary location. Since they do not provide secondary copies, your data is not really backed up and remains vulnerable to losses.

Additionally, eDiscovery holds are not suitable for long-term data retention. In fact, even Microsoft recommends using retention policies and labels for retaining data that’s not related to eDiscovery investigations.

So how can you overcome these limitations and effectively protect your Exchange Online data?

The answer: backups!

However, there’s no way to perform a traditional backup of Exchange Online mailboxes. As a result, you cannot restore a mailbox to the state it was in at the time of the backup. Backing up data into Outlook PST files is also not a good idea. According to Microsoft, this may lead to a loss of discoverability and you may not be able to retain control over the content.

Considering the (many) limitations of Microsoft’s native tools, the best way to backup data and ensure its availability and integrity is to leverage a third-party cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solution. Even Microsoft recommends regularly backing up all your data using third-party apps!

Benefits of Third-party Backup Solutions

Third-party backup apps offer all these benefits that you cannot get with native tools:

Tamper-proof Data Copies

A third-party backup app will create copies of your Exchange data and store it safely outside Exchange Online. SpinBackup for example, can store data in a public cloud of your choice, including AWS, GCP, Azure, and BYOS, ensuring that it is protected from deletions, tampering, and alterations.

Fast Backup and Recovery

Reliable third-party tools provide automated daily backups to ensure that your Exchange data is continuously backed up and available. Some tools also provide a fast search feature to quickly find and restore the necessary data. Plus, you can download the backed-up data directly to your local device. All of this means faster recovery times and minimal business downtime in the event of an unexpected occurrence.

Granular Recovery Options

If you need to recover specific files or folders within Exchange, a third-party solution can be useful. Granular recovery options mean that you don’t have to restore all data when your goal is to simply recover a small part of it. In this way, you can save time and money, and achieve your recovery point objective, which can be a critical advantage in scenarios where fast recovery is essential.

Flexible Retention Policies

Some third-party tools support flexible retention policies so you can choose how long to retain your backups. For instance, with SpinBackup, you can configure a retention policy for 6 months to indefinitely.

Compliance-ready Features

Certain regulations mandate specific requirements around data protection and retention that you must satisfy to remain compliant and to avoid regulatory fines. Microsoft’s native tools may not help you to achieve these objectives. But third-party backup tools can.

The best tools provide detailed reports and audit trails, plus easy data management, archived users, data encryption, and compliant backups. These features will help you maintain compliance with SOC 2, EU Privacy Shield, GDPR, and other regulations.

Best Practices for Data Backup

When evaluating backup solutions for your Exchange data, make sure to check for all the critical features discussed above. It’s also important to adopt the best practices given below:

• Schedule regular backups. Daily backups provide the best data protection. 
• Test backups: Testing is vital to identify errors in backups and to ensure that they can facilitate successful restoration.
• Establish security policies: Clear rules for data access and use can prevent data losses.
• Deploy strong security controls: Controls like encryption, multi-factor authentication, and access restrictions can minimize the risk of data deletions, compromise, and other issues.
• Educate employees: Training employees on data handling and management is vital to increase awareness and minimize human errors (that may result in data loss).

Together, these practices and the right backup solution will help to strengthen your backup strategy and minimize the potential for data losses.

Backing up Microsoft Exchange Online is Simple with SpinBackup

The loss of Microsoft Exchange Online data can have a devastating impact on your organization’s business continuity and competitiveness.

You can avoid such losses with SpinBackup. This third-party backup solution within the SpinOne platform effectively fills the gaps in Microsoft’s tools, empowering you to maintain the availability and integrity of Exchange data.

SpinBackup provides automated 1x/3x backups to all major cloud providers plus flawless restoration with 99.9% accuracy. It also offers granular data recovery, full data encryption, flexible data retention options, and local downloads, plus features for data oversight, data loss prevention, and ransomware recovery. And you get all of this for a very low starting price of just $3/user/month!Whether you want to backup Exchange emails, calendar, contact information, or tasks, SpinBackup is up for the challenge. Request a free demo to see it in action.