A common myth: "it's in the cloud, so it's safe." Google protects against hardware failure, but it won't bring back data you (or a departing employee, or malware) deleted after the retention window. That's your responsibility.
What Can Go Wrong Without Backups
- An employee leaves and their mailbox is deleted before you export it
- A user permanently empties Trash on critical files
- Ransomware or a bad sync overwrites good data
- A mistaken bulk delete removes shared files
How to Protect Yourself
- Use retention rules (Vault) to hold mail and files longer
- Add a third-party backup that takes daily copies of Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and Contacts
- Test a restore, a backup you've never restored is a guess, not a safety net
Backups are cheap insurance. The cost of losing a year of email or a client's project files is not.
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