In a modern business environment, we use E-Mail as a primary communication means, Teams to communicate and files to save our data. The source of these activities is generally  Microsoft 365 or Google/Alphabet’s Workspace. Backing up your business data is critical to your ongoing business.
These systems are great for a single business user or for a small business. They provide timely access, and access to your data wherever you are, be that the office, at home or on the road.
You are backing up those systems, aren’t you?
Yes no don’t know?

Backing up your business data is critical; we use a desktop app like Microsoft Outlook or a browser to connect to our E-mails in the cloud and access to our files through the local computer be that a PC or a Mac or again direct in the cloud through the browser of choice. You might even use your smart device to use on the go.
So, what happens when something goes wrong. How can you retrieve those important emails and files that form the heart of your business ?
This is where your backups come into place.
In Microsoft’s Microsoft 365 there are no backups for E-Mails, with the files in OneDrive or SharePoint you get 60 – 180 days to recover them.
With Google Workplace you get 60 days recovery for emails and files built in.
If you are not using one of the cloud based services then you are relying on local backups and that is a whole other story and needs for another day.
Short term recovery of files from within your computer is possible but with time lots of effort.
Long term is just not possible. Did an employee delete some important files then left, and no one knew for a number of months. Did you delete the mailbox of an employee who left only to realise that there were communications with clients in that mailbox. Are important emails missing and you can’t find them?
So here we turn to the offsite backups to find those items.
Hopefully you have put in place a backup routine to routinely backup data to an offsite backup service. That can be a cloud-based service that specialises in backing up cloud based services like Microsoft 365, Google or another offsite service. Those services can keep backups of your emails and files for long periods of time. You can choose from say 3 years to 7 years or even indefinite depending on your needs for retention.
So when the inevitable happens you now have a source to turn to, to find those important files.
With most of these Backup services you can restore an individual file, an individual e-mail to a whole folder or Mailbox, to even your entire system in case of a disaster. Those backups have multiple points in time to restore data from.
So you want to restore that mailbox from 12 months ago, no problems load up the program and start the restore.
Crypto (cyber-attack) is still happening and can effect your entire system. You can wipe your computer clean and then download your data as of a point prior to the issue occurring, then DON’T do what you did last time to get infected.