The job of a good cloud backup solution

Establishing a backup for your Microsoft 365 tenant contributes to fulfilling your data retention regulatory obligations, but it doesn't constitute a comprehensive compliance solution.

The primary objective of a dependable cloud backup solution is to guarantee easy accessibility to a data copy for recovery purposes.

A robust cloud backup solution incorporates various features to streamline retention and legal document production effectively.

These features include:

• Automatic detection of new content containers for inclusion in backups
• Granular restoration at the individual data unit level (document, list item, email, etc.)
• Full and incremental backup and restore options
• In-place and out-of-place restoration capabilities
• Exporting of files
• Encryption of backups in storage
• Automatic purging of backups after the default retention period expires
• Ability to identify and remove item-level backed-up data as required
• Delegation for document production without necessitating admin credentials
• End-user self-service restore functionality
• Comprehensive backup coverage for the entire tenant, encompassing all Microsoft 365 workloads and information types

Source: https://www.avepoint.com/blog/backup/microsoft-365-backup-retention

While these features contribute to the seamless retention and production of data, relying solely on 'backup' falls short in ensuring compliance with all facets of retention regulations, legal documentation requirements, and information risk management. Microsoft 365 furnishes data managers with a more potent tool for guaranteeing data retention compliance: Retention Policies.