In summary
- Microsoft 365 does not back up your data as is the case with most companies. The responsibility for the data lies with the customer.
- Most companies pay out too much in holiday pay — due to over-subscribed schemes and charges for those who have already left.
- A two-step authentication It is the single measure that reduces risk the most, yet it remains disabled in many subscriptions.
- Migrating your email is easy; migrating files and habits It’s just a lot of work.
In this article
Microsoft 365 is now the backbone of most Portuguese businesses. Precisely because it is so widespread, it is also where the most costly mistakes tend to occur — almost always in three areas: excess licences, security settings that need configuring, and the misconception that data is automatically protected.
Choose a plan without paying extra
The most common mistake is to assign the same plan to everyone. Within a company, user profiles vary greatly: those who spend their days working on spreadsheets and presentations do not have the same needs as those who only need email and a place to store files.
Before renewing, it’s worth asking yourself three questions: do you need the applications installed on your computer, or is the browser-based version sufficient? Do you need more storage space than the basic plan offers? Do you need advanced security and compliance features?
In most companies, an honest review reveals a significant number of licences that could be downgraded — and just as many that simply should no longer exist.
Accounts belonging to those who have left. It is the most common form of wastage and the easiest to rectify. An account belonging to an employee who left a year ago continues to be billed every month — and, worse still, remains a point of entry. A quarterly review sorts out both issues.
The misconception about backups
This is the most dangerous misunderstanding, and it is worth being very clear about it.
Microsoft guarantees the service availability — that the platform works and that you won’t lose your data due to an infrastructure failure. That’s not the same as backing up your data to protect against your own mistakes.
If someone deletes a shared folder and nobody notices for months, if an account is compromised and its contents deleted, or if ransomware encrypts synchronised files, the built-in retention mechanisms have time limits. Once these time limits have passed, the content cannot be recovered.
A company that relies on Microsoft 365 for email and documents needs a dedicated backup solution, with a retention level set by you and a tested restoration. It is a small cost compared to what it protects.
Minimum security
There is a set of features that should be enabled on any business subscription but which, in practice, are disabled with disconcerting frequency:
- Two-step verification for everyone — with no exceptions for management, who are precisely the ones most targeted.
- Blocking of legacy authentication protocols, which make it possible to get round the second factor.
- Automatic email forwarding alerts — Creating a rule that forwards everything out of the account is the classic first step taken by anyone who compromises an account.
- Review of external shares — files shared via a link with everyone, created two years ago and never looked at since.
- Active audit trail, because after an incident, it’s the only way to understand what happened.
Files: where migrations go wrong
Migrating email is now a fairly straightforward process. What usually goes wrong is the file part — and the reason is rarely technical.
The problem is deciding where everything lives. Personal work documents, team documents and company documents are stored in different places, and mixing them up creates confusion that lasts for years. When an important document is stored in someone’s personal space, it leaves the company when that person leaves.
It is worth establishing three rules before moving the first file: team files belong in team spaces; permissions are set by group, not by individual; and folder structures inherited from an old server should be simplified during migration, not replicated.
And allow for a settling-in period. The technology can be migrated over a weekend; changing habits takes weeks.
Day-to-day management
Microsoft 365 isn’t the sort of product you install and then forget about. It changes frequently, and a subscription that isn’t maintained will gradually deteriorate without you realising it.
Four simple routines keep things in order: a quarterly review of active licences and accounts; a regular check of external shares; a live backup restoration test at least once a year; and a review of access rights whenever someone joins or leaves the organisation.
None of these requires in-depth knowledge. They simply require someone to be given responsibility — and that is where things usually go wrong.
DataRoad implements and manages Microsoft 365 and cloud solutions for businesses, including migration, security configuration and dedicated backups, within the managed IT services.
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