This enhancement follows the roll-out of Microsoft’s Planner function to manage tasks and projects. The free update from Hornetsecurity is available for customers on both its 365 Total Backup products and 365 Total Protection (Plans 3 and 4). The broader scope of protection supports GDPR compliance and adds to the existing backup and recovery functionality across essential M365 applications, including Mailbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.
Empowering administrators via flexible restore options
A key feature of this upgrade is the granular restore option, which empowers administrators to choose multiple restore points. It provides a visual representation of the plan and its evolution within selected timestamps, allowing users to restore specific tasks with ease. This mirrors that of Microsoft Planner for enhanced usability.
Additionally, the full restore function allows administrators to restore all plans associated with one or more Microsoft 365 Groups to the same group, a different group, or a zip archive. If an organisation undergoes restructuring, relevant plans can be restored to new groups seamlessly. Restoring to a zip archive allows for easy offline review and long-term archiving. Crucially, disaster recovery can also be performed in the event of a complete loss of plans and boards from Microsoft Planner, minimising downtime and data loss.
New Four-Eye Approval for greater security and accountability
The latest release also introduces a new 'Four-Eye Approval’ feature. This tackles the risk posed by cybercriminals or rogue administrators who can delete all backup data or change important settings for M365 organisations, potentially causing significant damage to businesses. This enhancement also addresses concerns where administrators might accidentally delete backup data or alter critical settings related to data retention without proper oversight.
Four-Eye Approval enables a second approval step for any data deletion or changes to retention settings. This functionality is available both during the initial onboarding process and after a tenant has been established. Administrators will be able to specify whether all administrators can approve deletion requests or if only designated administrators are permitted to do so. This measure ensures an additional level of security and accountability in managing data retention policies.
Daniel Hofmann, CEO of Hornetsecurity, commented:
"Our commitment to providing unparalleled data protection solutions is demonstrated through our continuous enhancements to 365 Total Backup and our 365 Total Protection suite. By incorporating support for the increasingly popular Microsoft Planner and introducing the 'Four-Eye Approval' feature, we are reinforcing the security and reliability we offer our customers and anticipating their needs. These updates ensure that businesses can manage their data across Microsoft 365 with greater confidence and resilience, safeguarding against both accidental and malicious data loss."
