Cohesity Essentials M365

Myth Buster: Retention Is Not Backup

Ransomware attacks grew 22% in the first half of 2025, and 93% targeted backup repositories as well as production systems.² For organizations who rely on Microsoft 365 for communication and collaboration, that puts Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams data at growing risk. 88% of ransomware breaches for midsize businesses result in data loss, versus 39% for large enterprises⁵. Yet many still assume Microsoft is providing protection and recoverability of cloud data automatically. In reality, Microsoft 365 follows a shared responsibility model: Microsoft provides service availability, but customers must protect their own data. Native Microsoft Backup Storage supports short-term recovery only, with retention typically limited to 30 to 93 days before permanent deletion. That is not enough for ransomware recovery, long-term compliance, or delayed-detection incidents.⁴

For midsize organizations, the challenge is even greater. Lean IT teams already spend 10+ hours each week managing backup environments, leaving little capacity to build and maintain dedicated M365 backup infrastructure.⁴ Asking them to deploy, configure, monitor, and maintain a separate backup stack for Microsoft 365 adds cost, complexity, and operational burden they cannot afford. Compliance adds even more pressure.

What organizations need is not just retention, but true data protection that works on day one, that’s easy to manage, and protects and secures M365 data without adding the overhead of building and operating backup infrastructure themselves. That solution is Cohesity Essentials M365.

The solution

The Solution: Cohesity Essentials M365

Cohesity Essentials M365 is a fully managed SaaS backup service that delivers secure, policy-driven backup and rapid recovery for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and other workloads. Cohesity takes care of the infrastructure you simply configure your protection and retention policies. You get enterprise-grade protection for M365 data and optionally Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Groups, and Entra ID with zero operational overhead. Essentials M365 eliminates the operational burden from lean IT teams while giving them the control, visibility, and ransomware resilience they need.

M365 protection and resilience. Fully managed. No infrastructure.

Protect everything in M365. Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Groups, and Entra ID — all protected with granular item-level recovery and unlimited retention. Never tell a user their email is gone again.
Ransomware-hardened from day one. Air-gapped, immutable backups stored on Azure with Microsoft-backed SLAs. 8× physical copies across Azure data centers. Anomaly detection flags suspicious backup behavior so you recover clean data, uncompromised files.
Zero infrastructure to manage. Cohesity runs it. You consume it. No servers, no agents, no storage to size. Helios Copilot gives your IT team AI-assisted complete visibility and control across your entire M365 estate from a single console.

We offer two tiers for M365 Essentials Protection:

Essentials M365 Base

What it is: Cohesity-managed SaaS using the Microsoft 365 Backup Storage native API to deliver ultra-fast bulk recovery for core M365 workloads (Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online).

Key characteristics:

Focus on bulk, tenant-scale restore after cyberattacks or large corruption events
1-year fixed retention, minimum 50 users, lowest entry price point for commercial
No Teams/Groups, no granular item-level recovery, no threat scanning
Optional Entra ID protection and recovery
Optional immutable, air-gapped storage via Microsoft’s native API; no Cohesity hardware required

Best for: Users who mainly need fast, affordable bulk recovery for core M365 data and are okay with fixed retention and limited workloads.

Essentials M365 Core

What it is: Cohesity’s mainstream M365 solution for day-to-day operational backup and granular recovery across the full M365 portfolio.

Key characteristics:

Full M365 coverage: Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Groups, PSTs
Fine-grained item-level restore (emails, files, folders, Teams items) and point-in-time recovery
Unlimited retention (while subscribed), minimum 250 users
Includes basic anomaly detection
Optional resilience capabilities include: air-gapped and immutable storage, advanced threat protection with Google Threat Intelligence, and Entra ID protection.

Best for: Users that need comprehensive M365 protection, granular restore and discovery, and long-term retention/compliance with better ransomware-resilience built in.

Why Cohesity Essentials M365

Not just backup. A recovery guarantee backed by the Microsoft ecosystem.

Microsoft Backup Storage API. Near-instant initial full backups using Microsoft's native Backup Storage tier — 8× physical copies across Azure data centers. No agent, no egress fees, no surprise costs.
Unlimited retention, granular recovery. Recover a single email from 3 years ago in seconds. Restore an entire SharePoint site as it existed last Tuesday. Or bulk-recover thousands of mailboxes instantly after a ransomware event.
Start with Essentials M365, expand later. When you're ready to protect VMs, databases, and NAS, it's the same platform — Cohesity Essentials Appliance or DataProtect — no switching vendors, no data migration, no new console to learn.
Strong ransomware resilience. Experience granular item level restore. Immutable backups, anomaly detection, and Entra ID protection are all available options.

Solution Details	CCS M365 Base (Native protection for Office 365 workloads)	CCS M365 Core (M365 Data Protection + basic anomaly detection)
SKUs included	CCS M365 Base + MSFT Entra ID* + Professional Services*	CCS M365 Core + MSFT Entra ID* + Professional Services*
Offering type	Cohesity-Managed SaaS	Cohesity-Managed SaaS
Minimum capacity	50 users	250 users
Retention	1 Year Fixed	Unlimited
Hybrid/multi-workload	X**	✔*
Granular item-level restore	X	✔
Immutable backups	✔	✔
Air-gapped copy	X	✔
Deduplication & compression	X	✔
MSFT Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook	✔	✔
MSFT Teams, Groups	X	✔
Anomaly detection	✔	✔
Advanced threat hunting & monitoring (GTI)	X	X
Identity Resilience (Semperis)	X	X
Threat Protection	X	X
RecoveryAgent	X	X

* Add-on ** M365 only *** High speed native API

With Cohesity Essentials M365, organizations can:

Reduce risk of data loss and ransomware across their Microsoft 365 environment
Meet retention and compliance requirements without manual workarounds
Accelerate recovery—from a single mailbox to thousands of users—using consistent, repeatable workflows
Free up IT time, shifting effort from backup administration to higher-value initiatives

^{1. https://news.microsoft.com/en-cee/2024/11/29/microsoft-digital-defense-report-600-million-cyberattacks-per-day-around-the-globe/}

^{2. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/backup-targeted-93-per-cent/}

^{3. https://www.hornetsecurity.com/en/blog/nearly-a-third-of-businesses-suffered-data-loss-in-2024/}

^{4. https://thehackernews.com/2025/01/insights-from-2025-saas-backup-and-recovery-report.html}

^{5. https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/T16f/reports/2025-dbir-data-breach-investigations-report.pdf}