Not in the way most construction firms assume. OneDrive and SharePoint sync your drawings; they don't back them up. Microsoft's native recovery windows for business accounts are measured in days: roughly 30 days for a file restore. A commercial project runs 12 to 36 months. A warranty claim shows up 2 to 5 years after substantial completion. That mismatch, days of retention against years of liability, is the problem.

Sync Replicates Changes. Backup Preserves Them.

Sync keeps every copy identical. Change a file on the office desktop and the change appears on the PM's laptop, the superintendent's iPad, and the trailer workstation. That's the feature, and also the failure: sync makes no judgment about whether a change was good.

Backup keeps an independent copy you can go back to. It lives outside your Microsoft 365 tenant, under separate credentials, holding versions of your project data from points in time you pick.

So when a drawing gets deleted, encrypted by ransomware, or overwritten with a superseded revision, sync does what it was built to do: it pushes that bad state to every device in the firm. The damage is done before anyone opens the file.

None of this is a knock on Microsoft 365. It's the right place for active project files and a way to get plans out to the job site securely. It's a file service, not a recovery plan.

What About Other Cloud Platforms?

No, other cloud storage platforms do not automatically back up your files the way most firms assume. Like Microsoft, most cloud platforms operate under a "shared responsibility model," meaning the platform protects its own infrastructure, but the firm remains responsible for backing up its own data. Many platforms also only offer a 30-to-60-day window to restore a file after it's deleted - after that, it's often gone for good.

The Test That Matters: Can You Produce It in Year Seven?

Here is what makes construction different from every other industry running the same setup: your project files are legal evidence for many years to come - as-builts, approved submittals, RFI responses, marked-up drawings with dates and initials on them, the email showing when a change was directed. Set that against a retention window measured in days.

When a claim lands on a school you finished four years ago, the question is whether you can produce the approved submittal showing the owner signed off on the substitution. It's also why general contractor security questionnaires ask for documented restore tests rather than a yes-or-no on whether backups exist.

What Real Backup Looks Like: 3-2-1 and a Tested Restore

The standard is old, boring, and still correct. 3-2-1 means:

  • 3 copies. The working copy plus two backups
  • 2 storage types. So one failure mode can't take out both
  • 1 copy off-site. Because a hurricane that floods your office shouldn't reach your backup.

The Tempting-but-Wrong Move

When firms learn their retention is thin, the instinct is to buy more Microsoft 365 storage, raise the version limit, and extend the retention policy. It's cheap and it takes an afternoon.

Don't stop there. All three changes leave every copy inside the same tenant, reachable by the same admin accounts and the same login an attacker phishes. You've made the bucket bigger, not independent. Microsoft's own shared-responsibility position is that protecting and retaining your data is your job. Independence is the whole point of a real backup and recovery program, and it's what stands between a ransomware event and a payment decision.

How to Check What You Actually Have This Week

You can answer this in an hour, before anyone sells you anything.

  1. Ask your IT provider: "Do we have a third-party backup of Microsoft 365, separate from Microsoft's own retention, and what is its retention period?" A real yes names a product and timeframe.
  2. Open a real project folder. Pick a job that closed 18 months ago. Can you open the as-builts and approved submittals?
  3. Ask what happens when someone leaves. Who moves the OneDrive, and how long does the content survive if it's not moved?

A Katy Firm's Real Backup Example

A 10-person firm kept all of their project files in a cloud platform but had no separate backup solution in place. Their former IT provider had never mentioned this, and like many firms, they assumed the cloud platform itself was providing that protection. Alexaur implemented a dedicated backup solution specifically to protect their project files giving them real peace of mind that critical firm files won't be lost, regardless of what happens on the cloud platform's side.

Why Construction Firms Work With Alexaur

We've supported architecture, engineering, and construction firms across Katy, TX and Greater West Houston since 2001, and we're still family-owned. The person who answers your call knows why the trailer machine matters.

  • 98% of support tickets resolved on the first call
  • Average client tenure of more than 10 years
  • 100+ combined years of cybersecurity experience on staff
  • Clients who have implemented our full security and business continuity recommendations have not reported a business-disrupting security incident.
  • Fluent in the software you actually run: AutoCAD, Revit, Bluebeam, SolidWorks, Procore, Navisworks, ProjectWise, and OnScreen Takeoff.
  • Dell & Lenovo Partner
  • Managed Protection Security Suite Associate Accreditation
  • MSP Pro
  • Keeper Sales Professional
  • Network+ Certified
  • SonicWall Certified

Find Out Before a Claim Does

This gap stays invisible until it matters, and that moment is usually a warranty claim or a GC asking for a document from a job you closed three years ago. Nothing in your day-to-day changes in the meantime, which is why it goes unfixed.

Run the three checks yourself. If any of the steps come back blank, book a 15-minute discovery call and we'll tell you what your setup would and wouldn't recover, and what independent backup costs for your headcount.

Call 281-646-1200 or email results@alexaur.com.