UK company solves Microsoft 365’s biggest backup challenge

Author: Isha Jain

Channel-first cloud and disaster recovery specialist, virtualDCS has launched a comprehensive Azure backup service, which protects more than 250 configurable items in an established Microsoft 365 estate.

Known as CloudCover Guardian for Azure, the new service forms part of virtualDCS’s CloudCover 365 solution, which offers complete Microsoft 365 backup and recovery.

Plus, in another major development, virtualDCS has also launched a unique ‘clean room’ service for organisations and users that need to restore their systems, in a sterile and isolated environment, in the event of a ransomware attack.

Configurations covered by CloudCover Guardian for Azure span user accounts, access privileges and unique security groups across popular applications such as SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Exchange and Entra ID (formally Azure Active Directory). Crucially, Microsoft does not currently offer a backup service for these configurations.

Richard May, CEO at virtualDCS, says, “Backing up the data without your Azure configurations will not provide you with the glue to reassemble your data following a disaster, as the combination of Microsoft 365 data and Azure configurations is what defines your complete Microsoft 365 tenancy.

“It’s the con­figurations that effectively govern how Microsoft 365 is used and any lost or amended configurations can cause irreparable damage to the productivity, data security and reputation of an organisation.”

Created by the virtualDCS, CloudCover Guardian for Azure completely redefines what’s possible when it comes to backing up and restoring a Microsoft 365 estate’s configurable items. The system captures every vital configuration, meaning a Microsoft 365 environment can be proactively managed from a single console, for a complete, clean recovery after an incident.

As a result, IT teams and individuals restoring their systems are no longer trying to remember settings and manually reconfigure which groups users were in, what they had licences for and what they had access to.

Importantly, it’s also a vital security tool. Because it runs twice a day, it alerts administrators by email to any changes on their system that could be caused by insider threats, viruses or anything else, within hours of it happening.

In addition to offering a 360-degree view of an estate and fast restoration, CloudCover Guardian for Azure also enables organisations to maintain a clean blueprint of their desired Azure configurations. Whether it is the accidental deletion of a user or the suspicious amendment of a security policy, organisations can quickly roll-back to a safe state. After recreating and restoring an environment, users can then simply reintroduce data back into the environment. The system also enables unique Azure configurations to be easily replicated across new tenancies.

This is all complemented by another new service from virtualDCS. With the company’s new ‘clean room’ offering, where rather than taking hours or days to restore systems after a ransomware attack, organisations can now transfer data into a cloud-adjacent environment. This significantly improves recovery time objectives (RTOs) by giving organisations immediate access in an isolated environment, to avoid ransomware loops and ensure everything is healthy before data is reintroduced into the business.

The ‘clean room’ can be used in a number of invocation scenarios, such as restoring data as it exists to a sterile clean room environment for monitoring and data assessment. Once the recovery is confirmed clean, organisations can access data from the recovery room until their infrastructure is stabilised.