Alcion: Powered by Corso, a Free, Open-Source, and Secure Tool for Microsoft 365 Backup

Did you know that Alcion is powered by Corso, the leading and widely used open-source tool used to protect Microsoft 365 data? Read on to see why we have two separate efforts in the space, the differences between the two, and which option might be the best for you.

Corso: The Power of Community and Flexibility

Corso, available under the Apache v2 license, has grown from a fledgling project into an impressive community-driven solution. Corso was designed from the ground up to securely and efficiently backup all your business-critical data to object storage. It protects against ransomware using encryption and immutable object storage while simultaneously reducing costs using advanced deduplication and compression techniques.

We’ve also spent time on making Corso both robust and easy-to-use! As a purpose-built solution for Microsoft 365 protection, we focused on providing straightforward and intuitive backup and restore workflows that reduce backup time, improve time-to-recovery, and reduce admin overhead. For best-in-class performance, we also have a high-performance data engine (powered by Kopia) and a custom high-speed Microsoft 365 Graph API data mover.

Given some of these capabilities, it is not surprising that Corso is being used in production by many Microsoft 365 administrators and completes thousands of backups a day. In fact, several MSPs (Managed Service Providers) have also started to adopt Corso as the foundation for their client backup solutions.

In a world where data integrity and safety are paramount, Corso offers businesses a cost-effective yet dependable solution. It doesn’t matter if your organization is a startup or a multinational company, Corso scales according to your needs. We highly recommend checking it out if you have the time!

Alcion: Redefining Ease and Security

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Corso is indeed a great tool, and we are extremely proud of creating and maintaining the project. We do not intend to provide a commercial offering mirroring its features and causing conflict with its (amazing!) community. If anything, we plan to accelerate the project's development.

Built on Corso's robust foundation, Alcion is a commercial Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution for backing up Microsoft 365 data, that tackles some of the additional challenges our customers have asked us to take on. They include running large backups at scale and the operational concerns around ensuring the backup system meets RPO and RTO objectives, removing the overhead of patching and security backup servers, and the introduction of additional AI-driven security features to protect data from cyber threats and accidental data loss. Further, while Corso is a command-line tool best suited for folks comfortable with PowerShell or a terminal, Alcion provides a beautiful frontend (and an equally impressive API backing it!) that turns what used to be complex data protection workflows into extremely straightforward and easy to perform actions.  

Alcion also works hard to amplify the security of your Microsoft 365 data by introducing an array of cutting-edge features. Its malware elimination functionality scrubs your backup data clean of any potentially harmful code. Similarly, Alcion's built-in ransomware detection capability provides an additional layer of security, alerting you to any suspicious activity. The same features are used to mark “safe” backups for quick recovery in case there is ever a successful attack on your infrastructure. Delayed backup deletion and undeletes offer a defense against ransomware attackers targeting the backup system, which happens over 95% of the time!

Moreover, Alcion has integrated XDR (Extended Detection and Response) such as Microsoft Defender into its system. This advanced security feature allows Alcion to add more threat signals into its threat-detection engine and monitor not just Microsoft 365 but also endpoints and cloud apps by integrating against Microsoft Defender for End point and Cloud Apps respectively. After all, if there is a ransomware attack on your endpoints, we know Microsoft 365 will be next. It behooves us to run additional backups to stop attackers in their tracks.

Alcion offers other AI-powered features, one of which is the intelligent backup functionality. Alcion's smart algorithms analyze user work patterns, determining the optimal time and frequency for backups, ensuring your backups are more likely to run when data is actively being modified.

To sum it up in the feedback heard from our customers, the work Alcion has done at the intersection of AI, security, and useability is what they have fallen in love with!

Give Corso or Alcion a try!

In summary, while Corso provides an open-source, scalable, and flexible solution for Microsoft 365 backups, Alcion takes it a step further. It transforms the Corso framework into a powerful, secure, and hassle-free SaaS service, tackling both management challenges and security concerns head-on. Whether you're a small business, a large enterprise, or an MSP, Alcion and Corso offer distinct advantages that can accommodate your unique backup needs and keep your Microsoft 365 data safe and secure.

If you’re a Microsoft 365 admin, check Alcion or Corso out for yourself. In fact, you can try Alcion for free with a 21-day trial! No credit card is required. Once you sign up, you should be taking backups for your entire organization in 10 minutes or less (video). If not, please complain loudly to me! You can find me on Discord.