Short answer
No. An email archive captures every inbound and outbound message under enforced retention, indexed for eDiscovery and legal hold. A backup is a point-in-time copy for restoring lost mailboxes or data. Most regulated organisations need both, and FirstNet offers each as a separate service.
In detail
The difference in practice:
- Archive: answers "show me every email about this matter from the last seven years" for audits, investigations and legal hold
- Backup: answers "restore the mailbox or files that were deleted or encrypted yesterday"
- FirstNet's Mimecast archiving offers retention of 30 days, 1 year, 7 years or 99 years, where contracted
- Druva, delivered by FirstNet, backs up Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams with unlimited storage
Microsoft 365 retention settings are not a backup either. If someone deletes something important, or ransomware encrypts synced files, you need an independent copy to restore from.
FirstNet helps configure archive retention and legal hold workflows, while your organisation decides how long data must be kept. A FirstNet specialist can check whether both your retention and your recovery needs are covered.
Source: FirstNet Email Security & Threat Protection service page →
Didn’t answer your question?