In 2017, the White House’s American Technology Council advised federal agencies to move IT operations in the direction of shared services and cloud modernisation. Congress provided funds for digital transformation through the Modernizing Government Technology Act, and many agencies took advantage of the opportunity to make upgrades.

Some agencies switched to Office 365, a FedRAMP certified solution, and are benefiting from the new technology. The Department of Energy, for example, leveraged modernisation funds to consolidate an e-mail infrastructure that previously had 64 disparate e-mail systems and close to 200 000 mailboxes. And the Air Force says it has moved more than half a million users to Office 365.

Yet many users of Microsoft Office 365 have overlooked a potential liability, mistakenly assuming that the platform performs automatic backups of users’ data. It doesn’t. Without a third-party solution, users of Office 365 are at risk of data loss.