M365 policies

A Clumio M365 policy defines when to backup a Microsoft 365 entity and the duration for which to retain the backup. Once you have created a policy, you can apply it to mailboxes, contacts, calendars, folders, OneDrive libraries, and SharePoint sites. If you schedule backups, they automatically run every hour or day for which they are scheduled and continue for the specified time period, for example, one week.

M365 policies are created using Clumio’s Create policy wizard, but you apply and remove them from the relevant Microsoft 365 asset page. See Backup policies for details about how to create and manage backup policies. With a unified policy, you can create a single policy for all connected Microsoft services.

Microsoft 365 policy application

Clumio’s unified policies let you create a single policy that you can use for Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Policy application occurs at three levels.

• Account
• Groups
• Individual OneDrive or SharePoint assets

Any policy applied to an account is applied by default to all Microsoft 365 assets under it. If a policy is applied to a group, it is inherited by default by members of the group. See Microsoft 365 groups for more information. If a separate policy is applied to a Protection Group, Exchange mailboxes, OneDrive libraries, or SharePoint site, it loses the inheritance from the account policy. Any OneDrive or SharePoint assets picked up during an automatic inventory synchronization inherit the account or group policy if picked up as part of a group. Any newly added sites discovered through automatic inventory synchronization, inherit the account’s policy.

Microsoft 365 groups

Clumio provides the ability to select an M365 or Active Directory group and apply a policy to protect users in that group.

For example, your executives might require more frequent backup of their mailboxes or your contract workers might not require any data protection at all. If users are already in a group, then a policy can be applied directly to that group. This is useful when your company dynamically adds users from that group and the data protection policy is automatically applied. If you remove users from a group with a protection policy, then the group policy no longer applies to those users.

Group backup is set through a policy in the Clumio UI. Policy protection follows a hierarchical process to determine how to back up assets in groups. For example, if a mailbox falls under two groups, it inherits the policy of the group name in alphabetical order starting with the first letter of the name. If the first letters are the same, Clumio compares the second letter and continues this flow to determine which policy to apply.

When a policy is applied to a group, all users and mailboxes in subgroups within that group are protected. If a mailbox has an individual policy associated with it, that mailbox policy will always have precedence over the group level policy. The lower an entity is in the tree, the higher the precedence of policy.

When you add groups from your system they are ingested into Clumio. To view groups added from your account, navigate to the M365 Protection Dashboard in the Clumio UI and click an account from the accounts table. A summary page displays for that account. Click the Protected Groups tab to view the following information:.

• Group Name: The name of the group.-
• Type: Group type, for example, Microsoft 365 or Active Directory.
• Total Users: The number of users in a group.
• Policy: The name of the effective policy for the group. Click the Edit icon to delete or change a policy.

Microsoft 365 group protection

Multiple groups may exist across Microsoft 365 accounts in your environment. Clumio provides selective grouping to let you search for and protect only groups that you prioritize and choose to protect. The Protected Groups window lets you search for a group and determine whether or not to have it ingested into the Clumio inventory and protected by a policy. When a group is ingested into Clumio, it is displayed in the Protected Groups window where you can apply a policy to it. Once you apply a policy to a group, you and other members of the group, along with associated mailboxes and drives that are part of the group, and its sub-groups are protected by that policy.

Microsoft 365 group policies

If Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, or OneDrive accounts are members of a group, Clumio lets you change the policy at the group level so that you can manage backups and restores at a higher level and don’t have to make individual Exchange, SharePoint, or OneDrive policy changes separately. When you work with groups, you can access the Groups tab from the Account, or from any of the separate application windows. The group information is synchronous regardless of where it is accessed.