In this insight, we look at what many users think to be a surprising fact in that Microsoft 365 doesn’t provide a traditional email backup solution, and we look at what businesses can do about this.

Did You Know?…. 

Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft 365 (previously known as Office 365) is not designed as a traditional “backup” solution in the way many businesses might think of backups. Most importantly, email isn’t properly “backed-up” by Microsoft. Instead, the onus is on the business-owner to find their own email backup solution. In fact, Microsoft 365’s backup and recovery default settings only really protect your data for 30-90 days on average.

So, How Does It Handle Email and Other Data? 

Although Microsoft 365 doesn’t automatically provide a traditional email backup, it does provide some email and data handling protections that can include aspects of email. For example:

– Microsoft has multiple copies of your data as part of its ‘data resilience.’  For example, if there’s an issue with one data centre or a disk fails, they can recover data from their copies. Although this can help, it’s not the same as a backup that can be used to recover from accidental deletions, malicious activity, etc.

– Microsoft 365 provides retention policies that allow you to specify how long data (like emails) are kept in user mailboxes. Even if a user deletes an email, it can, therefore, be retained in a hidden part of their mailbox for a period you specify.

– For legal purposes, it is possible to put an entire mailbox (or just specific emails) on “Litigation Hold”, which basically ensures that the emails can’t be deleted or modified. Also, eDiscovery tools / document review software can be used by legal professionals for searching across the environment for specific data, e.g. to find emails, documents CAD/CAM files, databases, image files, and more.

– Microsoft’s archiving, i.e. where older emails can be automatically moved to an archive mailbox, can be one way to help businesses ensure that critical data is retained without cluttering the primary mailbox.

– When users delete emails, they go to the ‘Deleted Items’ folder. If emails are deleted from there, they go to the ‘Recoverable Items’ folder, where they remain for another 14 days (by default, but this can be extended) and can, therefore, be recovered.

Limitations 

Although these features help with retaining some important business data and emails, they’re not a substitute for a dedicated and complete email backup solution, and they have their limitations, which are:

– They may not protect against all types of data loss, especially if data gets deleted before a retention policy is set or if the retention period expires. For example, with email archiving, when an item reaches the end of its aging period, it is automatically deleted from Microsoft 365.

– They may not facilitate easy recovery if a user accidentally (or maliciously) deletes a vast amount of critical data.

– They don’t offer a separate, offsite backup in case of catastrophic issues or targeted attacks.

Third-Party Backup Solutions

Given these limitations and given that most businesses would feel more secure knowing that they have a proper email backup solution in place (such as for the sake of business continuity and disaster recovery following a cyber-attack or other serious incident), many businesses opt for third-party backup solutions specifically designed for Microsoft 365 to provide another layer of protection.

These solutions can offer more traditional backup and valued recovery capabilities, such as ‘point-in-time restoration’.

Backup Soultions

There are many examples of third-party Office 365 and email backup solutions and for most businesses, their managed support provider is able to provide an email backup solution that meets their specific needs.

Does Google Backup Your Gmail Emails? 

As with Microsoft 365, Google provides a range of data retention and resilience features for Gmail (especially for its business-oriented services like Google Workspace) but these aren’t traditional backup solutions. The retention and resilience features Google’s Gmail does provide include:

– For data resilience, Google has multiple data copies. If one fails, another ensures data availability.

– Deleted Gmail emails stay in ‘Trash’ for 30 days, allowing user recovery.

– The ‘Google Vault for Google Workspace sets email retention rules, which can be used to preserve emails even if deleted in Gmail.

– “Google Takeout” (data export) is probably the closest thing to backup that Gmail offers its users. Takeout lets users export/download their Gmail data for offline storage. Also, the exported MBOX file can be imported into various email clients or platforms. However, this isn’t necessarily the automatic, ongoing backup solution that many businesses feel they need.

Like 365, Google Workspace offers archiving to retain critical emails beyond Gmail’s regular duration.

Limitations

As with Microsoft 365’s data retaining features, these also have their limitations, such as:

– They might not protect against all types of data loss, especially if emails are deleted before retention policies are set or if the retention period expires.

– They might not offer an easy recovery process for large-scale data losses.

– They don’t provide a separate, offsite backup.

What Can Gmail Users Do To Back Up Their Email?

In addition to simply using Google Takeout for backups, other options that Gmail users could consider for email backup include:

– Third-party backup tools, such as UpSafe and Spinbackup and others.

– Using an email client, e.g. Microsoft Outlook. For example, once set up, the client will download and store a local copy of the emails, and regularly backing up the local machine or the email client’s data will include these emails.

– Setting up email forwarding to another account, although this may be a bit rudimentary for many businesses, and it won’t back up existing emails.

– While a bit tedious, businesses could choose to manually forward important emails to another email address or save emails as PDFs.

– Google Workspace Vault can technically enable Workspace admins to set retention rules, ensuring certain emails are kept even if they’re deleted in the main Gmail interface.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

You may (perhaps rightly) be surprised that Microsoft 365, and Google’s Gmail don’t specifically provide email backup as a matter of course.

Considering we operate in business environment where data is now a critical asset of businesses and organisations, email is still a core business communications tool, and cybercrime such as phishing attacks, malware (ransomware) are common threats, having an effective, regular, and automatic business backup solution in place is now essential, at least for business continuity and disaster recovery. Although Microsoft and Google offer a variety of data retention features, these have clear limitations and are not really a substitute for the peace of mind and confidence of knowing that the emails that are the lifeblood of the business (and contain sensitive and important data) are being backed up regularly, securely, and reliably.

For many businesses and organisations, therefore, their IT support company (or MSP – ‘managed service provider’) is the obvious and sensible first stop for getting a reliable backup solution for their Microsoft 365 emails.

This is because their IT Support company is likely to already have a suitable solution that they know well, and have an in-depth understanding of the business’s infrastructure, requirements, and unique challenges. This means that they can tailor their backup solution to fit specific client needs, ensuring seamless integration with existing systems. Also, their first-hand knowledge of a business’s operations positions them better for rapid response and effective resolution in case of data restoration requirements or backup issues. For businesses, lowering risk by entrusting email backup to a known entity can also streamline communication and support processes, making the overall backup and recovery experience more efficient and reliable for the business.

Following complaints from customers about an overheating issue with the Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple is reported to have issued a statement explaining the causes, with a promise that it’ll be fixed with an update.

Overheating 

Since the iPhone 15 went on sale in September, some customers have been taking to social media to report that their devices had been heating up to the point that they were too hot to touch. The Apple iPhone is powered by the new iOS 17 system.

Speculative Causes

Some of the user speculation about the possible causes of the overheating has included blaming the new titanium casing because it may be less effective at dissipating heat than the old stainless steel casing, the introduction of the new USB-C port to comply with European law (Apple has been forced to replace its ‘Lightning Cable’), and the new Taiwan-made A17 Pro chip.

Apple has denied that the casing or the USB-C port have been a cause of the overheating and has also said that it will not be reducing the performance of the new chip as a way of preventing overheating.

The Actual Causes (According To Apple) 

In a statement issued to many of the main media channels, Apple has acknowledged the issue and identified what it believes the conditions that may be causing phones to “run hotter than expected.” In the reported statement, Apple identified these as the causes of the overheating:

– Increased background activity in the first few days after setting up or restoring the device.

– A bug in iOS 17 (Apple’s latest operating system, released September 18 this year).

– Recent updates to third-party apps that are causing them to overload the system. It’s been reported that these updated third-party apps include Instagram, Uber, the and the Asphalt 9 video game app. Uber is already reported to have fixed the issue with its app.

Will Be Fixed With An Update 

Apple has assured users that the problem isn’t dangerous and that it’s working on a bug fix update for the iOS17 system as well as working with the apps that were running in ways that contributed to the system overload and subsequent overheating.

Recent Woes With iOS 17 And The iPhone 12 

This latest overheating problem adds to a string of bad publicity and their likely negative effects on sales and reputation. For example:

– Apple’s iPhone 12 sales recently being banned in France over fears that it could be emitting dangerous radiation. Apple has disputed ANFR test findings that led to the ban but has opted for a software update to fix any radiation issues because it had a limited time to comply, and other countries were threatening sales bans too.

– Just days after the iOS 17 launch, Apple had to release the  iOS 17.0.1 and iPad OS 17.0.1 security update to fix three critical vulnerabilities, all of which may already have been actively exploited against versions of the iPhone OS before iOS 16.7.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

It must be particularly frustrating for Apple that just as it was about to launch the iPhone 15, it was facing sales bans of the iPhone 12 based on a report in France showing a slightly high radiation ‘limb SAR’ value (which Apple disputes), followed by the need to issue a security update to its iOS 17 just days after its release.

Now it’s facing reports from angry customers about overheating of its latest iPhone release – they say trouble comes in threes. Any reports of overheating phones and radiation, for example, are likely to trigger fears about fires and cancer risk among consumers. The iPhone 12 sales ban must have hit sales, and overheating may also be a turnoff to customers plus a chance for Apple’s competitors to pick up sales. Bearing in mind what seems like a succession of issues, which could potentially chip away at the reputation of iPhones being a safe and secure choice, it’s not surprising that Apple has sought to get updates out there as quickly as possible, challenged the speculation, and issued a statement for the media to report. It remains to be seen if the updates fully fix the issues and silence the criticism and Apple must be hoping (and trying to ensure) that attention can soon be shifted to the positive aspects of the new features of its new phone and OS rather than the potential risks they may pose.

Researchers at European XFEL X-ray laser have reported creating an atomic clock with such a precise pulse generator that it has an accuracy of only 1 second lost in in 300 billion years!

How Atomic Clocks Work 

Up until now, atomic clocks have been the world’s most accurate timekeepers by using electrons in the atomic shell of chemical elements, such as caesium, as the pulse generator define the time.

Electrons absorb microwaves at specific frequencies, elevating their energy levels. Atomic clocks use this principle, targeting caesium atoms with microwaves and adjusting the frequency to maximise absorption, known as ‘resonance.’ This resonance helps to stabilise the clock’s quartz oscillator, allowing caesium clocks to maintain accuracy within a second for 300 ‘million’ years (note, that’s not a mistake – the ‘billion’ accuracy is outlined later in this article). The narrower the resonance, the more precise the clock.

Who Uses Atomic Clocks, And Why? 

The unparalleled precision, the size (at least server-rack size) and the expense (from thousands to millions of pounds) means that most of us won’t have one in the kitchen any time soon. Atomic clocks are actually used in a variety of sectors for a number of reasons (with accuracy being the main one), such as:

• In Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), e.g. GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo. These use atomic clocks on board their satellites to enable accurate positioning and navigation information to users worldwide.

• In Telecommunications networks to synchronise data transmissions, ensuring efficient and error-free data exchange.

• In scientific research (unsurprisingly). For example, physicists and other scientists use atomic clocks in experiments that require precise time measurements. They’re also crucial in testing fundamental principles of physics, like Einstein’s theory of relativity.

In astronomy, atomic clocks are used to provide the synchronisation for multiple observatories to coordinate observing the same astronomical object (known as VLBI or Very Long Baseline Interferometry).

Other ways that atomic clocks are used are for accurate time-stamping in financial market systems, in energy (power grid synchronisation), national timekeeping services, and in deep space exploration (to help with navigation accuracy in places where GPS signals aren’t accessible).

Strontium Clocks – Even More Accurate! 

While caesium atomic clocks are highly accurate, strontium clocks are even more so, with an accuracy of one second in 15 billion years!

The Challenge 

Although most of us would probably perfectly happy with such accurate clocks, scientists have long been frustrated by the fact that any improvement in accuracy is practically impossible to achieve with this method of electron excitation.

Nuclear Clocks

In what has been described as a “groundbreaking” experiment, and a “milestone” achievement, the European XFEL’s team focused on using the atomic nucleus (of scandium) rather than electrons, and the atomic shell to generate an accurate pulse. This is because nuclear resonances are much more acute than the resonances of electrons in the atomic shell (although harder to excite).

The researchers have reported using X-rays with an energy of 12.4 kiloelectronvolts (keV, about 10,000 times the energy of visible light) to achieve the necessary resonance. One major bonus of using scandium is that it’s readily available as a high-purity metal foil or as the compound scandium dioxide.

Using this method, the researchers have reported being able to make a clock with an accuracy of 1:10,000,000,000,000 possible, which corresponds to one second (lost) in 300 billion years!

Why Now? 

Although the scientific potential of the scandium resonance has been known about for more than 30 years, as Anders Madsen, leading scientist at the MID experiment station at the European XFEL says: “Until now, however, no X-ray source was available that shone brightly enough within the narrow 1.4 feV line of scandium”  and “That only changed with X-ray lasers like the European XFEL.” 

Another important breakthrough by the scientists in this experiment has been the precise determination of the transition energy. As the head of the data analysis, Jörg Evers of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg explains: “The exact knowledge of this energy is of enormous importance for the realisation of an atomic clock based on scandium.”  

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This breakthrough in finding a way to make even more accurate atomic clocks has value for many high-tech industries sectors, e.g. space global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) telecoms networks, scientific research, financial market systems, deep space exploration, and more. It is these types of areas where improving accuracy (even by what could seem an unfathomably small amount), can make a real difference, and there will be rub-off benefits to humanity, economies, and other industries in the future. Also, a clock with this new even greater level of accuracy could help research in some exciting, truly futuristic areas such as enabling gravitational time dilation to be probed at sub-millimetre distances, thereby enabling studies that haven’t been accessible so far.

Clearly, it won’t be possible to verify if the claim about the accuracy of the new type of atomic clock is as accurate as predicted, and most of us will have to take the scientists’ word for it that this is a significant breakthrough, that could feed into other breakthroughs.

October 1980 : Halloween, Early AI & Ghosts …

AI isn’t something that’s just emerged in the last couple of years. Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde had distinct personalities and if these names sound familiar it’s because they were the four ghosts that chased Pac-Man around his maze, each with different styles of trying to catch him, a kind of ‘AI’.

Originally developed by Namco in 1979, the game went on to break multiple records, emerging as one of the most played games of all time and in the United States, the icon of Pac-Man was listed as recognisable by 94% of the population, at the time making it the most recognisable video game character ever (source : Guinness World Records) and has grossed over $14 Billion dollars.

3 Take-Aways About Being Different :

1-Different Offering. At the time, almost all of the other video games were “shoot ’em ups” and dominated by male players. The designer, Toru Iwatani, said: “All the computer games available at the time were of the violent type—war games and Space Invader types. There were no games that everyone could enjoy, and especially none for women. I wanted to come up with a ‘comical’ game women could enjoy.”

He was right, they did!

2-Different Markets. When Pac-Man was introduced to the States (October 1980), things really took off thanks to a deal with Bally/Midway. The code was ported across to various other platforms and consoles so that the game was ubiquitous across the country (and later Europe and other countries worldwide) and available on all major personal computer brands.

I.e. the distribution was an incredible success well outside Japan.

3-Different Names. It was originally called ‘Puck-Man’ (a derivative of the Japanese phrase “Paku paku taberu” meaning to gobble something up).

As legend would have it, the original inspiration came when Toru Iwatani saw his a pizza with a slice removed (resembling a hungry face) while the Power-Pellets (AKA Power ‘Cookies’) were inspired by the spinach-superpowers from Popeye.

Namco were concerned American teenagers would vandalise machines to make the name “Puck-Man” obscene, hence the name-change to Pac-Man.

Bonus Ball :

Within Mergers and Acquisitions, a “Pac-Man defence” is a strategy whereby a target-company of a hostile takeover tries to switch things around and buy the acquirer. It refers to when Pac-Man eats an energizer and starts eating the ghosts (rather than the other way around).