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Benefits of Barracuda Essentials for Office 365

By Outsource IT · · Updated July 10, 2025 · 4 min read

Benefits of Barracuda Essentials for Office 365

Benefits of Barracuda Essentials for Office 365

Barracuda Essentials for Office 365 is an advanced service that works with Microsoft Office 365 to provide Canadian cloud backup, enhanced email security, and archiving services. It complements the basic security features provided by Microsoft Office 365 and gives the user more options for backup and more detailed archiving and eDiscovery. It consists of a variety of packages and features that together protect from data loss from an attack or internal user error.

When it was first launched, it included email security, cloud archiving service, and cloud to cloud backup. It was further expanded in October 2016 to provide even more features and usability.

Barracuda Essentials for Office 365 works to give you, your business, and your data more protection and recovery options. It’s never a bad idea to have multiple backup plans and recovery processes in the event of a ransomware or malware attack, or the always common internal user error. This extra level of protection and security provided by Barracuda also helps businesses who have strict compliance standards organize emails and follow these requirements more easily.

Essentials for Office 365 is an excellent complementary service for Office 365 that can help protect your business.

The Barracuda Advantages

Barracuda Essentials for Office 365 comes with a variety of advantages for security and backup services for Office 365. You can choose features and packages that appeal most to you and fit your business needs. The service consists of comprehensive email threat protection, archiving for compliance, and cloud backup and recovery.

Email Security

Barracuda’s email security stops email-borne threats before they even get to the mail server and the user (both inbound and outbound protection). It also provides email continuity service if the primary service becomes unavailable due to an attack or system issue.

The Email Threat Scan is a feature that was added after the software’s original release. It analyzes existing Office 365 deployments and mailboxes for advanced threats, provides reporting about these threats, and offers steps for remediation. This way, not only can you see the threats, but you can see patterns and understand the best way to address and correct them. These email security features work together to detect, prevent, and recover from ransomware and malware attacks.

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is used for detecting sophisticated, zero-day, advanced persistent threats, and ransomware variants. ATP automatically scans email attachments in most commonly used file formats and opens any questionable content in a secure sandbox environment to detect malicious attachments.

Cloud to Cloud Backup

How often do you find files are lost or corrupted and you’re unable to recover them through Office 365? Whether through malware, other threats, or simply user error, this is extremely frustrating.

Barracuda provides true cloud to cloud backup, so your files are backed up to ensure extra security for file access. If files are lost or corrupted, whether because of malware, other threats, or user error, you can use the service to restore them at any time.

Barracuda SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business Backup

SharePoint is an online collaboration and document management system. Teams can work together on projects and files from anywhere on any device in real time. The SharePoint backup means you can restore data when necessary (for example, if someone corrupts or loses a file). This provides an extra layer of protection for your important documents that many people need access to.

OneDrive for Business is personal online storage space in the cloud, provided for you by your company. Use it to store your files across multiple devices with ease and security. Ensuring proper backup, recovery, and versioning is critical to work efficiency and success, and part of Barracuda’s solution.

Cloud Archiving Service and eDiscovery

This is particularly useful for organizations that need to meet specific compliance requirements. It’s a cloud-based archive of email stored in a separate, secure repository. You can store unlimited emails for as long as you need without the risk of corruption or deletion.

Additionally, for eDiscovery it’s easy to search for emails and organize them. You can also put legal holds on emails when required to prevent them from being accessed or opened. This is great for companies who find the Office 365 email archiving is not detailed or robust enough for their compliance requirements.

Who Can Benefit from Barracuda Essentials?

While almost any business can benefit from this software and make use of the advantages, some businesses may require less or more robust security features.

The occurrences and likelihoods of data breaches and security threats is continuously increasing. It seems like every week, a large business is hacked or security is compromised. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t have the time or resources to increase IT staff or create custom solutions to address these potential threats.

Barracuda Essentials for Office 365 is easy to use, affordable, and minimizes time and money required to spend on IT solutions and increasing security, backup, and recovery options.

If a business has a growing need for IT security, cloud backup, or recovery options for Office 365, this software could provide benefits and simplify some processes.

Is Barracuda Essentials for Office 365 Right for You?

If your business has compliance standards to meet, requires access and backup of files from multiple locations and devices, or simply wants to enhance the existing security provided by Office 365, Barracuda Essentials could be a good fit for you.

Outsource IT can help you decide which cloud backup and security software fits the needs of your business. Contact us today to discuss your options and protect your business.

About the author

Outsource IT

Written and reviewed by the Outsource IT team, a Burlington, Ontario managed IT services provider supporting businesses across the GTA for over 20 years. Meet the team.

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