SaaS & Cloud Data Backup

Microsoft and Google keep their services running. That is what they guarantee — uptime, availability, infrastructure. What they do not guarantee is that your data will survive a deletion, a ransomware event, or a departing employee who took things with them. That responsibility sits with you, and the native tools they provide — recycle bins, limited retention windows, litigation hold — are not a substitute for a real backup.

This is not a theoretical gap. SharePoint and OneDrive files can be encrypted by ransomware just like any network share. Mailboxes get deleted, sometimes by accident and sometimes not. A former employee's account gets deprovisioned, and three weeks later someone realizes there were files in there that nobody copied. The window to recover through Microsoft's or Google's own tools is short, limited in scope, and often gone before you know you need it.

What we do

Independent backup of Microsoft 365. We back up Exchange Online mailboxes, OneDrive files, SharePoint sites, and Teams data to an independent copy held outside the Microsoft ecosystem. The backup runs on its own schedule — not on Microsoft's — so it captures the state of your data at defined intervals and holds it for as long as your retention policy requires.

Independent backup of Google Workspace. Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and Contacts get the same treatment — a separate, scheduled copy that isn't subject to Google's retention limits or dependent on Google's recovery tools. If a Drive file is deleted, overwritten, or encrypted, you restore from the backup, not from a trash folder that may have already emptied.

Endpoint user folder backup. Documents, Desktop, and other local folders on users' machines are a category most organizations miss entirely. Server data gets backed up; personal machines often don't. We extend the backup scope to cover those folders, so when a laptop is lost, stolen, or fails, the data that lived only on that machine isn't gone with it.

Granular, point-in-time restore. Recovery works at the level you actually need — a single email, a specific version of a file, an entire mailbox, or a snapshot from a particular day. You don't restore everything to get one thing back. You pick the item, pick the point in time, and restore it.

Departed-employee retention. When an employee leaves and their account is deprovisioned, their mailbox and files remain available in the backup for as long as your policy requires. No scramble to export data before the account closes. No gap in what you can retrieve later.

Why it matters

The shared-responsibility model has a gap most businesses don't see. Cloud providers are responsible for their infrastructure. You are responsible for your data. That distinction is in the terms of service and rarely in the sales pitch. An independent backup closes that gap — it means you have a copy that isn't subject to the same failure, the same deletion, or the same attacker.

Ransomware reaches cloud storage. Synchronized folders like OneDrive and Google Drive are particularly exposed: whatever a ransomware strain encrypts on the local machine propagates to the cloud copy. An independent backup taken before the encryption event gives you a clean restore point that the ransomware never touched.

Native retention windows are not backup. Microsoft's recycle bin holds items for 93 days. Google's Trash empties at 30. Litigation hold and eDiscovery are compliance tools, not recovery tools, and they require configuration, licensing, and intent before the fact. If you didn't set them up for a specific user or dataset, they don't help you when something goes wrong.

Employee offboarding is a recurring risk. Intentional deletion, accidental deletion, and account deprovisioning all create data loss scenarios that come up in the normal course of running a business. A backup with departed-employee retention means offboarding doesn't have to be a race.

When you need this

A mailbox or Drive gets deleted. Someone deletes their own email in bulk, an admin removes an account, a departing employee clears their inbox — the backup has it.

Ransomware encrypts synced storage. Files on OneDrive or Google Drive are encrypted and sync the encrypted version to the cloud. The backup copy, taken before the event, is clean.

A former employee's data is needed weeks or months later. Legal hold wasn't set, the account is closed, and the data isn't in the trash anymore. Departed-employee retention in the backup covers this.

Accidental mass-deletion. A SharePoint site cleaned up too aggressively, a Drive folder removed by someone who thought it was unused — granular restore brings back what was there, down to the individual file or day.

Compliance and retention requirements. Some regulated industries require data retention beyond what the cloud provider's default tools supply. An independent backup with configurable retention fills that requirement without relying on provider-side configuration that may or may not be in place.

Where this fits

This page covers the part of the backup picture most organizations don't have: the cloud data that lives in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and the local files on endpoint machines. It expands on the "backup most businesses don't have" point in the Backup & Cyber-Resilience pillar, which covers the full strategy — from cloud data through servers through disaster recovery.

For the server and endpoint imaging side — full-image backups of physical and virtual servers, local appliance storage, and offsite copies — see On-Site BDR. The two solutions complement each other: BDR handles what runs on your infrastructure; SaaS backup handles what lives in the cloud and on users' machines.

How we help

We work with businesses across the New York Metro and the Puget Sound (Seattle) area to close the cloud backup gap — scoping retention policies, configuring backup schedules, and making sure the restore process actually works before you need it. The setup fits around the platforms you're already using; there's nothing new for users to learn. Whether you're running Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or both, we cover it with the same granular, independent protection.