Cloud backup is your responsibility, not Microsoft's. Here's how we cover it.

There's a comforting belief we hear all the time: "It's all in the cloud, Microsoft has it backed up, we're fine."

Sort of. Microsoft absolutely backs up the underlying infrastructure — servers, storage, redundancy across data centres. If a data centre in Sydney fails, your mailbox doesn't disappear.

What Microsoft doesn't do is protect you from you

• If a staff member deletes a folder full of client files, that's on you.
• If ransomware encrypts your OneDrive files and syncs the encrypted versions to your other devices — yes, this happens, and it's called cloud-native ransomware — that's on you.
• If a mailbox is compromised and cleaned out, that's on you.
• If you need to restore a specific version of a specific file from six months ago for a legal request, that's on you.

Your cloud provider protects their infrastructure. Your data is still your responsibility

What proper cloud backup includes

• Microsoft 365 workloads backed up separately — Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams — to a location outside your tenant.
• Immutable retention. So if your tenant gets compromised, the backups don't.
• Point-in-time restore. So you can go back to a specific date, not just "the latest version."
• Long retention windows appropriate to your business — legal, HR and financial records often need years.
• Regular test-restores. Same principle as any other backup: if it hasn't been tested, it isn't real.

The ransomware sync trap

We flag this one because we've seen it more than we'd like. Modern ransomware can sync encrypted files to your cloud drive, overwriting clean versions, and target version history and recycle bin contents before you even notice. A cloud backup that isn't isolated from that sync path is a cloud backup that goes down with the ship.

Isolation matters. We build for it.

What sits inside the Cloud Solutions pillar

Cloud backup and disaster recovery planning is a first-class part of the pillar, not an afterthought. We include backup verification as part of the Support & Maintenance baseline, so cloud backups are treated with the same rigour as on-prem ones.

The plain-English check

Ask any current or prospective provider: "How do you back up my Microsoft 365 data, where does it sit, and when did you last restore from it?" The answer should take under 60 seconds.