Litigation hold does not create a copy of the data in a secondary physical location. Litigation retention for mailboxes or mailbox folders effectively prevents intentional or unintentional deletion of data and retains data for legal proceedings or to comply with legal requirements. While litigation holds preserve existing data, there are barriers that prevent litigation holds from appropriately replacing backups. According to data protection best practices, a properly executed backup scheme guarantees all three ms should something happen to the main (original) record: malicious action in the form of a ransomware attack or a disgruntled employee; Errors where someone with legitimate access accidentally deletes important data (or has to undo changes they didn`t want to keep); and incidents where the service provider has an outage or loss of data. Litigation cannot protect you from the 3 MS: there is no physical separation, limited ability to perform large-scale restores, and no real concept of version control. Litigation retention requires an organization to retain all data related to a dispute in which it is involved. Microsoft Office 365 offers some native dispute retention features, but is designed to preserve user data for eDiscovery purposes, not to recover lost data. It`s a common misconception in today`s market that O365 disputes can serve as a safeguard. While it is true that the litigation hold retains a copy of user data, it is certainly not an alternative to Office 365 backup.

Imagine a situation where a mailbox is infected with ransomware. You can`t delete the infected email message if the mailbox is on litigation hold. Since there is no secondary copy of the data, there is also no way to delete the infected email and restore the rest. If you follow Microsoft`s recovery instructions, it takes 15 minutes to recover two emails from a litigation retention mailbox. After this calculation, we estimate that it would take 52 days to fully recover a user mailbox containing 10,000 emails. You may be wondering: Do I need third-party backup software if I use litigation retention in Microsoft Office 365 for backup? The answer is a resounding YES! To make the reasons for my answer clearer, let`s start by clarifying the purpose of Litigation Hold in relation to backup software. This gave me food for thought, as enabling litigation retention on all bulk data wasn`t something I expected from anyone, especially not to create a backup. There are many reasons why a litigation hold and backup are different and cannot be used to replace each other. And it`s so important not to confuse them – in every way – legally, commercially and technically, that I thought it was important to write it. On the other hand, data backup and recovery software is designed to back up copies of data to a location separate from the source, with the goal of maintaining business continuity in the event of malicious or accidental deletion. Data backup generally applies to most company-generated data, as opposed to certain content such as litigation hold. These backup and recovery software solutions are designed to quickly restore content and make it available to the original user or others.

For hands-on experience with RecoveryManager Plus` handling of Exchange backups and restores, watch our web-hosted product demo or download a free 30-day trial. Accidental deletion, gaps and confusion in retention policies, internal and external security threats, and regulatory compliance requirements can result in significant and irreversible data loss on an Office 365 platform. These threats are common, which means that Office 365 backups should be an important part of any organization`s disaster recovery plan. The term “hold litigation” comes from U.S. case law (2003, Zubulake v. UBS Warburg), where the judge ruled: “Once a party reasonably anticipates litigation, it must suspend its routine document retention/destruction policy and establish a litigation stay to ensure the retention of relevant documents.” Litigation retention retains all content indefinitely, while a retention policy allows you to specify how long content is retained. You can also use both features together to create a hybrid preservation strategy. Whichever option you choose, it`s important to remember that compliance with data retention regulations is critical for businesses in today`s digital age. Moreover, in such situations, it is always advisable to constantly back up your Microsoft 365 data using a useful tool like Kernel Office 365 Backup.

By investing in a third-party backup solution, such as AvePoint`s Cloud Backup, the provision of backup and recovery capabilities can be properly integrated into an IT service management process and made available to the enterprise and end users, without the litigation limitations or additional privileges required for the eDiscovery Center. Most companies have clearly defined retention policies for all their data (including email) for this reason. A documented retention rule could help limit the company`s liability in the event of a lawsuit. To illustrate this with an example, if you can`t provide evidence (say) from 3 years ago because your documented retention policy should keep emails for 3 years – the judge will understand. But if you`ve kept all the emails legally, you can`t refuse at this point to produce emails older than 3 years – everything that is kept becomes fair play from the point of view of evidence. But that`s not all – there are many more reasons why the O365 dispute shouldn`t be used as a backup. For example: we are often asked this question and, at first glance, it is easy to see how holding a dispute could be equated with a backup – both of which have something to do with the “retention” of data. The reality, however, is that backup and litigation differ in many ways, and any business that doesn`t understand the differences between them (and the benefits of both) will eventually learn impact the hard way. Let`s look at the key differences between retaining a dispute and securing it. The Microsoft Security and Compliance Center is designed to help organizations meet litigation and regulatory compliance needs. While this is what a company needs to comply with regulations, it doesn`t allow you to quickly recover data lost due to accident or intent.

In fact, it`s almost impossible to recover an entire mailbox from litigation retention. Microsoft O365`s native process assurance feature greatly simplifies the eDiscovery process associated with a trial. This is very important for many organizations. However, as described above, it is not an alternative to backup. In fact, the use of withholding as a form of safeguard carries a risk rather than mitigates it. No Bueno. Retention policies can be used to meet legal or regulatory requirements and ensure that content is retained only as long as necessary. Retention policy settings can be configured to perform certain actions when content reaches the end of its retention period, such as deleting content or moving it to an archive.

Retention policies can also be configured to send notifications to users or administrators when content is about to expire. Overall, retention policies can help you keep your Microsoft 365 account organized and tidy. Because litigation hold doesn`t allow you to delete email or other mailbox items, such as notes and journals, you inevitably need additional storage space in the mailbox and end up paying more for storage. Why litigation retention doesn`t replace data backup Litigation retention doesn`t restore mailboxes directly. Learn more by visiting metallic.io/office365-backup-and-recovery or try it yourself and start a free trial! Litigation hold can be enabled for individual users or an entire organization, and it can be configured to be activated automatically when certain conditions are met, such as when a user receives a legal suspension. Overall, Litigation Hold is an important tool for organizations that need to ensure that all relevant data is retained in the event of a dispute or investigation.