Is our Microsoft 365 data (email, OneDrive, SharePoint) backed up automatically?

Short answer: no — not in the way you think. This is one of the most dangerous misconceptions in small-business IT, and it catches out businesses that assumed "it's in the cloud, so it must be safe."

Microsoft's shared-responsibility model

Microsoft guarantees the service is available and resilient across their data centres — that the platform stays up. But under their shared-responsibility model, protecting your actual data is your responsibility, not theirs. Microsoft 365 has only short, limited retention — a recycle bin and a retention window measured in days — which is not the same as a backup.

Where that leaves you

Consider the everyday ways data disappears:

• A staff member accidentally deletes a folder of files or a mailbox.
• A departing employee maliciously wipes or takes their email.
• Ransomware encrypts files synced to OneDrive and SharePoint.
• A mistake isn't noticed until after the short retention window has passed.

In every one of these cases, once the retention window closes, that data is simply gone. There is no "undo" button and Microsoft support cannot recover it for you.

The fix: proper third-party backup

We deploy a dedicated third-party backup of Microsoft 365 — covering Exchange (email), OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams — with long retention and point-in-time recovery, held independently of Microsoft. That means whatever happened, and whenever you notice, you can restore individual emails, files or entire mailboxes to a point before the problem. It is inexpensive insurance against what would otherwise be a business-ending event. If you're not certain your Microsoft 365 is backed up, assume it isn't, and call (08) 9325 1196.