Why Cities and Municipalities Should Invest in Microsoft 365 Backup

Microsoft 365 (M365) has become a game-changer for cities and municipalities, offering a powerful cloud-based suite of productivity tools. These tools easily enable work productivity and collaboration among city workers as well as with the constituents they serve.  

M365 offers a subscription-based model, reducing upfront software costs compared to traditional on-premises solutions. Small local governments can pay for the services they need and avoid the burden of ongoing system maintenance.

Enhanced security is important, too. M365 offers features like multi-factor authentication to help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive government systems. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 enhances the security posture further by providing advanced cyber protection across email, collaboration tools and endpoints.  

While Microsoft 365 offers some native functions to protect data such as legal hold and recycle bin features – these are not a backup.  Without an adequate backup solution in place this leaves large retention gaps and can breach industry legal and compliance requirements.  Let’s explore why an external Office 365 backup solution should be a priority to maintain data integrity and business continuity.

Small Governments' Data Can Be at Risk

For most cities and municipalities, data is a critical asset that drives operations, supports community services, and ensures regulatory compliance. This data includes everything from residents’ personal and financial information (PII data) to sensitive government communications. The risks of data loss due to accidental deletion, malicious attacks, or software issues are real and can have severe repercussions, including:

• Operational Disruption: Loss of critical data can disrupt essential services, affecting everything from law enforcement to tax collection and critical emergency response.
• Financial Hardship: If data is lost to a ransomware attack or destroyed by a careless or malicious insider, it could cost the city significant money to restore access to critical information.
• Compliance Violations: Critical data is subject to strict legal or regulatory requirements pertaining to retention and privacy. Loss of such data could result in lawsuits, fines and/or penalties.
• Reputational Damage: Data breaches or loss can undermine public trust in local government operations.

Underlying all these risks is M365's Shared Responsibility Model, which puts the onus for complete data protection on the customer organization. Microsoft’s policy clearly states that customers always retain responsibility for their own information and data. A primary way to protect data is to maintain thorough and current backups. These challenges were also apparent during the 365 EduCon DC 2023 where data security is still top of mind for small government decision makers.

The Limitations of Microsoft 365's Native Retention

M365 has some serious limitations pertaining to its retention functions that all customers must consider:

• Limited Recovery Window: M365's native recovery options typically have short windows. Depending on the service (like Exchange Online for emails) it might only be 60 to 90 days. This means permanently deleted data after that time may be unrecoverable.
• Incomplete Data Coverage: Not all M365 data is protected by native retention. For instance, certain Teams data like chat history might not be included.  
• Limited Version Control: Restoring previous versions of files or emails within M365 might be limited or unavailable depending on the specific service and version history settings.
• Disaster Recovery Limitations: M365 outages or large-scale service disruptions can prevent customers from accessing their data entirely for extended periods of time.  
• Accidental Deletion Risk: M365's recovery options might not be readily available in case of accidental large-scale deletions.  ‍
• Compliance Concerns: M365's native features might be insufficient for robust compliance archiving required by law.  

In summary, M365's native retention is designed for basic recovery scenarios, not for comprehensive data protection.  

The Role of Cyber Insurance

As the threat landscape continues to evolve, cyber insurance has become a critical component of risk management strategies for cities and municipalities. However, obtaining and maintaining cyber insurance now often requires proof of a proactive data protection strategy. Mature strategies should include adequate security over and above data retention, functionality such as data immutability, delayed delete, ransomware and malware detection. Insurance providers recognize that the ability to promptly recover from data loss or cyberattacks reduces the potential cost of claims, thus minimizing their risk. Cities and municipalities without a dedicated M365 backup solution may find it increasingly difficult to secure a policy, and even if they do, they may face higher premiums

Implementing a Robust Microsoft 365 Backup Strategy with Alcion

To mitigate these risks and meet insurance and compliance requirements, cities and municipalities need to implement a comprehensive Microsoft 365 backup strategy.

Alcion’s AI-powered Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform focuses on protecting data stored in Microsoft 365 for local governments, with some key security features geared towards this user base:

• Security-First Approach: Alcion prioritizes data security with features like multi-layered protection against ransomware and malware using threat detection for clean backups, and encryption to safeguard data during storage and transit. Where licensed, Alcion also integrates with Microsoft 365 Defender threat signals to proactively provide additional backup retention to protect the M365 estate before a ransomware event can spread.
• AI-Driven Functionality: Alcion leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to intelligently schedule backups based on usage patterns to optimize efficiency, and to proactively detect and respond to security threats to M365 data.
• Robust Data Protection: The platform delivers features like highly reliable backups stored separately to prevent data loss from M365 outages. Also included are fast, efficient, and granular data restore capabilities to minimize downtime.
• Ease of Use: The Alcion BaaS platform is designed for a user-friendly experience for administrators, including a simple setup process to get started quickly and an intuitive interface for managing backups and restores.  
• Cost Effectiveness: Because Alcion is a cloud-based service, customers save significantly on administration and infrastructure costs. What’s more, there are no hidden fees or sizing risks with Alcion's SaaS model. 

Microsoft 365 Backup is Essential to Good Governance

In summary, Alcion BaaS aims to provide local governments with a secure, user-friendly, and AI-powered solution to back up and protect their critical data stored in Microsoft 365.

The necessity of Microsoft 365 backup beyond Microsoft’s native features can't be overstated. It’s a critical component for establishing a robust security posture, and for many organizations, it’s a requirement for obtaining cyber insurance. For city officials and IT leaders, the directive is clear: Investing in an advanced M365 backup solution like Alcion is not just a technical necessity; it's an essential part of good governance in the digital age.  

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