Is Your Office 365 Data Secure? Here's Where Microsoft Stores It

Microsoft's UK Data Centres

When registering your Microsoft 365 tenant, Microsoft will place your tenant within the appropriate Geolocation based on the usage address that you are using during the registration. Various services from Microsoft use different physical locations but these will typically be grouped under one Geolocation – which for us is “United Kingdom”.

Data centres for the UK are in Durham, London, and Cardiff.  Specifically, Microsoft 365 services sit as follows, note that data sits across two data centres for redundancy:

*Tenants with 500 users or less will be onboarded with Microsoft Teams and will not have access to Skype for Business.

**We have expanded on Azure Active Directory and the services delivered by Azure Active Directory below.

Understanding where your data is stored is important for Office 365 users. Here is an overview of the locations of two Microsoft services:

Yammer

Acquired by Microsoft in 2009 for $1bn, Yammer's data was initially stored in the USA and later on AWS. However, it now resides in Microsoft's European data centres.

Microsoft Sway

Data created in Sway, which launched in 2015, is located exclusively in Microsoft's US data centres. However, with Sway's iOS app being retired and increased functionality in PowerPoint, it might not be around for the long term.

How do I ensure my tenant is in a particular location?

To ensure your tenant's location, choose your location in the 'Usage Location' field during the Microsoft 365 sign-up process. You can check your data's current location in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center under 'Data Location'.

Unfortunately, Microsoft does not offer a service to move your tenant's location between geographies. To conduct this, you must perform a manual migration exercise.

How do I know where my data currently sits?

Within the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre, click on your organisational name and the information is located towards the bottom of the page under “Data Location”.

Explore Microsoft's global data centre locations in their 3D globe map available here.

Can I move the location of my Microsoft tenant?

We speak to customers who wish to move their tenants between geographies, either through corporate re-structuring, or that the tenant was originally set up in the wrong location. 

Unfortunately, this is not a service offered by Microsoft, and the only way to do this is via a manual migration exercise.

Can I split the locations of my data?

If you are a multi-national, you may wish to hold employee data in the geography in which your employees are located. If you have over 250 users and a minimum of 5% of those users will be using multi-geo, you can purchase “Multi-Geo” licence which allows you to define where OneDrive for Business and Exchange Online data sits on a per user basis.

You can move data to the following available Satellite Geos:

Azure AD

The backbone of every Microsoft 365 tenancy for Identity. With any tenant deployed with a European Address, the core data is stored within the European Data Centres. Some elements as are processed in the US. We have broken down Azure AD Services and their data residency below. You can find more information about Azure AD here.

How can I separate out part of my organisation's data or merge from another tenant?

Many organisations go through change due to acquisition or to splitting out part(s) of their business, and as part of this activity they may wish to bring together or separate out Office 365 data. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this and it is a manual task. If you need help, we perform this type of work on a regular basis – carving out SharePoint, OneDrive for Business and Exchange data from Office 365 is the most common.

Resources:

• Find out more: See the Microsoft article Where is Your Data Located
• Understand Identity data storage for European customers in Azure Active Directory
• Considering migrating email to Office 365? Understand what we offer.
• Ready to move SharePoint data to the Microsoft Cloud? Get to know Our SharePoint and OneDrive migration service
• Want to secure the data your store in Microsoft 365? Understand out Zero Trust Approach