How Microsoft employees are leveraging the cloud for file storage with OneDrive Folder Backup

Any device, no matter the operating system, is susceptible to a ransomware attack or a device crash.

Microsoft OneDrive Folder Backup (known as Known Folder Move) is a policy deployed by Microsoft that automatically syncs the contents of a user’s critical folders—Documents, Desktop, and Pictures—to the cloud to protect it in the event of device crashes and ransomware attacks. Files are safe in the cloud, easy to share and collaborate on, and are accessible across different devices.

“The goal of this project was to empower every OneDrive user in Microsoft to protect their critical files and sync their “known” folders to the cloud—this gives them seamless access from any of their devices from anywhere without changing the way they work,” says Priya Chebiyam, a senior product manager who leads Microsoft’s internal use of OneDrive for the Microsoft Digital team—the organization that powers, protects, and transforms the company.

[Learn about Microsoft’s digital security strategy. Find out how Microsoft is enabling remote work. Discover how a OneDrive feature shifts the way employees save files within Microsoft.]

Putting data security first

Carini and Chebiyam smile for the camera in a photo taken in an office in a Microsoft building. — Priya Chebiyam (left) and Gaia Carini were instrumental in piloting, testing, and deploying OneDrive Folder Backup (Known Folder Move) across Microsoft. Chebiyam is a senior product manager for Microsoft Digital and Carini is a principal group product manager for the OneDrive product group.

The Known Folder Move project was piloted at the end of 2019, starting with a small group of employees.

A significant step in the pilot was to decide on the deployment approach—would it be silent or prompt-based? With a silent approach, the policy would be automatically initiated for users who would then be notified when their backup was complete. With a prompt-based system, users would be notified at the start of the process and choose whether to opt in or opt out.

While a silent approach is widespread across the industry, Microsoft opted at first to give employees a choice during the program pilot. As the team rolled out the pilot program, a surge in cyberattacks altered the plan.

“We found during the pilot program that opt-in security measures raise levels of vulnerability,” says Chebiyam. “Adoption of security measures was slow in the opt-in pilot. There was also an increased risk of low employee participation.”

“Pivoting to a silent deployment reduces risks,” continues Chebiyam. “So, faced with rising levels of cyberattacks, the choice was clear.”

The Microsoft team swiftly countered rising cyberattacks by switching to silent deployment and rewrote the Microsoft’s corporate security policy to require that all work documents and files reside in a corporate-approved storage system; OneDrive is that system.

With this shift in tactics, the team has been progressively rolling out a new plan that emphasizes security and disaster recovery across the company.

“Security is ingrained in the fabric of our culture,” says James Speller, a client deployment engineer on the project with Microsoft Digital. “The idea is to make data security as easy and non-disruptive as possible without compromising on safety.”

Learning from the results of the Known Folder Move pilot, the company took a different path at LinkedIn from the start, choosing the silent deployment approach.

It’s ideal to keep security measures as non-disruptive to employees as possible, and striking the right balance between security and efficiency has been at the top of our minds during this project.

—Priya Chebiyam, senior product manager

“At LinkedIn, doing it that way was right for their culture and the way they run their business,” Chebiyam says. “We focused on accelerating the adoption of security measures.”

Additionally, the cross-company Known Folder Move team relied heavily on employee feedback to create a better solution and user experience. They took their time to get this rollout right, as this policy affects employee productivity.

“We had to take a step back and consider how the rollout will affect productivity,” says Chebiyam. “It’s ideal to keep security measures as non-disruptive to employees as possible, and striking the right balance between security and efficiency has been at the top of our minds during this project.”

The team used Viva Engage (formerly known as Microsoft Yammer) and OneDrive in-app surveys to collect feedback that would be sent directly to the help desk. Feedback was communicated to the product team, continuously improving the product to provide a better user experience.

After enough feedback was gathered and implemented, the rollout came to the entire Microsoft user base—approximately 290,000 targeted employees and vendors. This user base was divided based on role and geography, and the team started rolling it out to about 5,000 users per batch.

Because files are automatically synced to OneDrive, users don’t have to worry about what happens to their computer, giving them peace of mind that their files are safe.

—Gaia Carini, principal group product manager

New employees and vendors are given this feature by default.

“The rapid growth of KFM-enabled OneDrives will significantly help the admins with any data investigation issues efficiently, with a quicker turnaround during critical emergencies. As a tenant admin, this KFM capability helps me to apply improved security controls on our Corp content residing in user OneDrives across the company,” says Abhishek Sharma, a senior service engineer with the team.

Change management

To get employees on board with using the cloud, messaging focused on the benefits of using OneDrive. These benefits include the amount of storage provided (all OneDrive accounts in Microsoft come with 5 TB of free cloud storage), the ability to access files if your computer is lost, broken, or in a refresh cycle, more secure sharing, easier access, improved collaboration, and real-time versioning.

“Because files are automatically synced to OneDrive, users don’t have to worry about what happens to their computer, giving them peace of mind that their files are safe” says Gaia Carini, a principal group product manager on the experience and devices team. “You don’t have to worry about where your data is or where your content lives.”

While Eva Etchells, a senior content publishing manager on the Microsoft Digital team, worked on messaging internally to employees, our OneDrive product marketing team, shaped the narrative around OneDrive Folder Backup outside of Microsoft, communicating the benefits to external stakeholders.

The narrative formed around figuring out how to automatically backup all users’ content without disrupting the way they work. Like Etchells’s messaging, the OneDrive product team focused on device crashes, stolen PCs, ransomware attacks, and so on to drive change management and adoption of the product.

Out of sight, out of mind

With OneDrive Folder Backup, users don’t have to think about the safety and security of their documents or worry about it affecting their productivity. It’s invisible, seamless, and always in sync. Millions of files and hundreds of terabytes of data have been uploaded to OneDrive, and it continues to grow each month.

“OneDrive has provided a valuable benefit to me for a long time,” says Susan Sims, a fan of the service who works in Microsoft Digital as a team Senior Program Manager.

Sims managed global file services years ago that hosted shared content. According to Sims, there was an attack on those file servers nearly monthly, attacks that led to manual lockdowns to make sure the company didn’t lose business-critical content. Microsoft OneDrive Folder Backup has eliminated the risk and concern around losing content from device crashes as well as attacks.

“OneDrive is crucial for recovery from ransomware attacks,” says Vivek Vinod Sharma, a Senior Security Architect who served as the security point of contact for the project for the Microsoft Digital Security and Resilience team. “As a best practice for fast-tracking people to get back to a productive state if affected by an attack, we want more business data to reside in OneDrive.”

Moving forward, the team aims to enable OneDrive Folder Backup through silent deployment for all Windows users.

“OneDrive Folder Backup brings the power of the cloud to the desktop on Windows and macOS,” Carini says. “It’s a critical part of the strategy and important for customers to enable in their organizations.”

Backing up files to the cloud is one of the most secure ways to store critical content to prevent file loss from ransomware attacks.
For faster and more effective change management across the organization, focus on the features and benefits employees will gain by adopting the policy to make them more likely to opt-in.
For a global rollout, communication is vital to ensure everything runs smoothly, especially when working across four or five different teams and geographies. Defining roles for each person and group is crucial.
When you begin moving your employees to OneDrive in the cloud, make sure their needs are at the center of everything you do. Get them as involved in the process as possible and act on as much of their feedback as you can to create a better user experience for everyone.
Acknowledge your organization’s policies and processes regarding security and compliance and use that as guidance when rolling out an approach to the entire user base.
Employees should be informed regarding what data is being collected and how that data is being used as part of the company security measures.
Consider the risks of workers not participating in security back-up options. Enforcing security uniformly as a company-wide policy minimizes potential damage to company assets from ransomware attacks.