Another month, another lockdown. With any luck, Lockdown 2.0 will be considerably shorter and more effective than the first one.
But however long it lasts, the latest Coronavirus restrictions are still having a dramatic and far-reaching impact on the way we all work and run our businesses.
The most significant consequence of the lockdowns we’ve endured in 2020 has been the increase in remote working. Even before the pandemic, trends indicated that more of us will be working remotely in the future. Now, COVID-19 has accelerated that change process dramatically. Almost all businesses have been forced to adapt and transform their ways of working overnight, with varying degrees of success.
And it now seems that remote is working here to stay, pandemic or not. According to recent research, the vast majority of people who have tried working remotely would now like to continue to do so, to some degree, for the rest of their career. That’s a substantial change in employee behaviour, and one that has important consequences for IT providers.
Just how safe is your Microsoft 365 data?
Here’s just one reason why. The rise in remote working has increased the number of businesses using Microsoft 365. And it’s no surprise, as it’s a great solution. It’s one that allows remote employees to work together securely from any location, with software that they’re already familiar with. But with millions of employees saving and storing their work and data in the Microsoft 365 cloud, there are some serious data security challenges emerging that not everyone is aware of.
Over the past year, Microsoft 365 has been a vital tool for workers in the NHS and the Government in their fight against COVID-19. As a result, Microsoft’s support resources have – quite rightly – been focused on keeping them going. However, this means that some of the usual safeguards you might expect for your data are not in place if your business isn’t one of these key services.
Here’s why a 365 backup is so crucial
Critically, there’s a common misconception that Microsoft guarantee that you will always be able to access your data, whatever happens. They don’t.
That might come as a nasty shock to some IT managers. The truth is that Microsoft doesn’t promise that you’ll be able to access your data if systems go down. You could experience a delay accessing it, or it could even be deleted permanently and if it is, there’s no assurance from Microsoft that you’ll ever get it back. Clearly, this has huge implications. It directly impacts how IT professionals make important decisions about the security of the vital core data that their businesses rely on to operate.
Many IT managers are already starting from a position in which they feel that remote workers present a greater security risk anyway – even without the added risk of any system failure. And so, it’s clear that as the trends towards remote working continue to move in only one direction, Microsoft 365 data security is a growing concern. The financial stakes have also never been higher. Companies who are already dealing with interruptions to their normal business due to COVID-19 can ill afford to lose the core data that’s essential to the running of their business.
A solution to the challenge of data security
Here at virtualDCS, we’ve worked with our partners to come up with an innovative solution to this challenge, that puts businesses firmly back in charge of their data. Our CloudCover 365 backup system offers an alternative to the limited backup and retention policies offered by Microsoft.
One of the most significant advantages of CloudCover 365 is just how easy it is to manage user data via a fully-customisable, browser-based white labelled portal.
Here’s how it works. Take the example of a law firm with a large number of staff using Microsoft 365 to access their emails and to work on shared presentations. Without CloudCover 365, this data is vulnerable if there’s any kind of issue around accessing it.
Typically, if a user has an issue with their email or documents on a shared folder, an IT department has three options. They’ll either restore everyone’s data, choose not to restore it at all, or be required to sift through all of it to pick out the specific file that belongs to the single user who has lost access. None of these options are ideal. They’re time-consuming and will usually result in multiple tickets for an IT department to deal with.
The CloudCover 365 solution is much simpler and far more powerful. The IT department – or even the end-user themselves – can simply log onto the online portal and click a button to restore the specific data they need.
Secondly, CloudCover 365 also offers a big advantage in terms of data retention. A soft delete of data within Office 365 removes it from the Recycle Bin, but it’s still recoverable for 14 days. Microsoft 365 also keeps Junk email for 30 days. But after that, the system purges these items completely, with no way of recovering them. Read more about Microsoft 365 backup and retention policies.
In contrast, CloudCover 365 gives users an unlimited length of time to access any deleted items or emails marked as junk, meaning that mistakes don’t need to be permanent ones.
An exciting opportunity for resellers
CloudCover 365 is an attractive product for many that want to resell Microsoft 365 backup because it’s a great way to add value to what they offer their clients.
We know that many of you are happy to sell Microsoft 365 because it’s a great product that meets the needs of your customers. But we believe that we have a product in CloudCover 365 that makes it even more attractive, especially in the current working environment.
For resellers, CloudCover 365 offers you a way to manage all your customers’ data from the central portal. And because it’s fully customisable it can be tweaked to precisely meet both your needs and the needs of your clients.
We also see it as an excellent extra selling point for the IT solutions you offer your customers. Many of our IT reseller partners offer CloudCover 365 as a bolt-on service to their existing 365 licenses or cloud solutions.
Different businesses have different needs and ways of managing their data. CloudCover 365 is flexible enough that you can put the power to restore data in the hands of users, or you can even create a helpdesk service that meets their needs.
Need some help?
Do you manage the IT for an organisation and are you concerned about the security of your data as more of your teams work remotely? Or, perhaps you’re an IT reseller who thinks that CloudCover 365 would be the perfect solution for your customers.
We’d love to hear from you. So, give us a call on +44 (0)3453 888 327 or email us at enquiries@virtualDCS.co.uk and we’ll be happy to discuss how we can help you further.
