Microsoft 365 Backup and Data Recovery Service for UK Businesses

Microsoft operates a shared responsibility model: it guarantees the service, not your individual files. Its own services documentation recommends maintaining a regular backup of your content, because native tools like the Recycle Bin and version history are retention features, not a backup. AMVIA closes that gap, raising your Microsoft Secure Score in the process.

What does AMVIA's Microsoft 365 backup include?

Every licensed user's data across the four core Microsoft 365 workloads is backed up daily to UK-based cloud storage, with granular recovery down to a single email or file. You restore exactly what you lost — without overwriting current data or rolling back an entire mailbox.

• Exchange Online — all emails, calendar items, contacts and tasks for every licensed mailbox, with point-in-time restore of individual messages, folders or whole mailboxes.
• SharePoint Online — every site, document library, list and site setting, including the SharePoint sites created automatically behind Microsoft Teams. Recover a file, a library or a full site collection.
• OneDrive for Business — all user content backed up independently of Microsoft's native version history, restorable at file, folder or full-drive level.
• Microsoft Teams — channel posts and files, including private-channel content stored separately in SharePoint. Teams chats live in Exchange mailboxes and are covered by the Exchange backup. Pairs with our wider Microsoft Teams hardening work.

How does the backup process work?

AMVIA scopes, configures, verifies and monitors your backup as a managed service — you are not handed a console and left to run it. Backups are encrypted, automated and tested, with daily monitoring and a defined recovery path for every restore request.

1. Scope and policy — we identify what needs protecting (mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams) and set retention to match your compliance and business requirements. 2. Backup configuration — automated, encrypted backups run multiple times daily to UK-based cloud storage. 3. Verification — we run test restores to prove backup integrity and confirm recovery times meet your expectations. 4. Monitoring and recovery — backup jobs are checked daily, with self-service restore for users and full disaster recovery handled by our team. Critical issues are responded to within one hour.

Why do UK SMEs need Microsoft 365 backup?

Because Microsoft will not recover data you delete, that ransomware encrypts, or that falls outside the native retention window — and the legal and insurance consequences land on you, not Microsoft. Independent backup is the difference between a five-minute restore and a permanent loss.

Under UK GDPR, the Information Commissioner's Office can issue fines of up to £17.5 million or 4% of global annual turnover for the most serious failures, and Article 32 specifically requires the ability to restore the availability of personal data after an incident. A documented Microsoft 365 backup is direct evidence of that control. It also matters commercially: UK cyber insurers increasingly ask whether cloud data is backed up before they will quote or pay out. Ransomware now targets cloud storage directly — the NCSC's ransomware guidance stresses offline, separately-credentialed backups as the recovery foundation. If an attack is in progress, our incident response team uses your clean restore point to get you trading again.

Native Microsoft 365 retention vs AMVIA managed backup

Retention policies and backup are different tools for different jobs. Retention preserves data for legal hold and compliance windows; it does not protect against ransomware or recover data deleted before the policy existed. The table makes the gap explicit.

For a fuller picture of where backup sits in your Microsoft estate, start with an M365 security audit and tighten sign-in risk with Microsoft Defender for Business.

How much does Microsoft 365 backup cost?

AMVIA prices Microsoft 365 backup on fixed monthly per-user pricing with no lock-in contracts, so cost scales with your licensed headcount and you can leave if we ever stop earning your business. We quote against your actual user count and retention requirements rather than a generic package, and the backup runs alongside your existing Microsoft 365 licences — it does not replace them.

Microsoft's own list prices are a useful anchor for your licensing: Business Basic is £4.60, Standard £9.60 and Premium £16.90 per user per month (ex VAT, annual). Backup is an additional managed service on top of whichever plan you run. For broader resilience planning, pair it with business continuity.

Why choose AMVIA for Microsoft 365 backup?

AMVIA is a UK security partner that runs Microsoft 365 backup as a monitored, accountable service — not a self-service tool you configure and forget.

• Sheffield-based, UK-focused — our engineering and support team operates from Sheffield and understands UK compliance, infrastructure and the realities facing British SMEs.
• Accredited and certified — AMVIA holds Cyber Essentials Plus certification and Microsoft Solutions Partner status.
• 1,200+ UK businesses protected — across legal, finance, healthcare and professional services.
• Fast, responsive support — critical issues are responded to within one hour, by phone, email and portal, with named account managers who know your environment. Our customers rate us 4.8/5.