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Though work from home was in existence much prior to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, the latter has given us enough reasons to adopt and adapt to hybrid work. To sustain the productivity and success of organizations, the latter have welcomed the hybrid working environment and adopted, supported, and maintained the working of organizations. Software companies have also developed numerous software programs to aid and support hybrid work. One of them is Microsoft 365, which has persistently tried to develop and create new programs besides enhancing the existing ones by adding more features to ease collaborations and communication, planning and assigning tasks, etc., for organizations, institutions, professionals, students, and individuals.
But before moving entirely to cloud-based services, users should know how secured their data on the cloud is and what the responsibilities and accountabilities of both the cloud service providers and the users would help in the maintenance and security of data. Moreover, though testing faculties of cloud service providers try their best to keep their programs fool-proof, we cannot deny any unexpected and unexplained issues which may hinder or decelerate the efficiencies or working of the programs. One of the scenarios is concern regarding storage and persistent availability of on cloud, entire data of users using Microsoft 365. Thus, we are here to discuss why it is very important, rather critical, to back up Microsoft 365.
It is important to understand that for all public cloud services, all the users should follow the ‘shared responsibility model’ and be aware of and understand which security tasks are to be handled by the cloud service provider and you. Besides this, you should also follow Office 365 backup best practices. The workload responsibility varies with the nature of the service – whether it is Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or an on-premises deployment. The last one is not a cloud service. Below we are presenting workload responsibility distribution in a tabular form.
Responsibility | On-Premises | IaaS | PaaS | SaaS |
---|---|---|---|---|
Classification and Accountability of Data | User | User | User | User |
Client and End-Point Protections | User | User | User | Shared |
Identity and Access Management | User | User | Shared | Shared |
Application-Level Controls | User | User | Shared | Microsoft |
Network Controls | User | Shared | Microsoft | Microsoft |
Host Infrastructure | User | Shared | Microsoft | Microsoft |
Physical Security | User | Microsoft | Microsoft | Microsoft |
In an on-premises deployment which is conventional, all the responsibilities are towards you, i.e., the user. In cloud service, some of these are shifted partially and some entirely to the cloud service provider as we move from on-premises services>>IaaS>>PaaS>>SaaS., as shown in the table above.
SaaS solutions like Office365 and Dynamics 365 can protect the data of customers like Office Lockbox and Data Loss Prevention, but ultimately, it is the user who should manage, classify and configure the solutions for their unique security and compliance requisites.
For PaaS solutions, customers should configure and establish the process to protect the data and the feature of the solution, which protects their data like Azure Rights Management Services and provides the capability to protect data and is integrated into SaaS solutions.
For IaaS Solutions, customers should configure and protect the data which is stored and transferred. Data classification should be done by the user. To meet compliance, customers are needed to audit all virtual devices which are deployed within their solutions.
IaaS solutions need customers to configure and manage the identity and access controls over the managed hosts and virtual devices. Though it supports identity and access management for virtual devices, solutions like Azure AD need configuration at the virtual device level. While running IaaS services, you should pay attention to the additional security and compliance responsibilities.
In SaaS solutions, management and security of network controls are taken care of as part of the software as the network infrastructure is extracted from them.
In PaaS solutions, just like SaaS solutions, the service provider does the configuration.
In IaaS solutions, it is the shared responsibility of the user and the service provider to deploy, manage, secure, and configure networking solutions that are to be applied.
In IaaS, it is shared responsibility with users in order to assure optimal configuration and security of the service. This responsibility comprises configuring permissions, and network access controls are needed to ensure correct communication of networks and attaching and mounting of correct storage devices.
Before we discuss various scenarios and reasons when and why you need a backup of your Microsoft 365 data, it is good to know why you should upgrade your Microsoft 365 subscription.
In scenarios like this, your desktop is attacked and affected by malware or virus. If you have configured the OneDrive application, that too will get infected, leading to the corruption of your data.
In the present blog, we have discussed that Microsoft 365 users should know that Microsoft 365 is not solely responsible for the entire cloud data of its users, and it believes in and follows shared responsibilities. We have also tried to discuss the latter. The most important thing to bring home to our readers is that backup of entire Microsoft 365 cloud data is essential as in any case of loss of data for any reason, you are able to get it back from your backed-up data for which you need a reliable third-party program like Kernel Export Office 365 to PST. which is not only easy to use but an efficient tool too.