Backup
Backup & Business Continuity
Most businesses have something backing up. Far fewer have watched a restore work. Those are different things, and the gap between them only becomes visible on the worst possible day.
Who this is for, and what it fixes
Something is backing up. Nobody has restored from it, so nobody knows what it would give back.
If one of these sounds familiar, this is usually the right conversation.
- You have backup software and no idea when it last succeeded.
- A cyber insurance questionnaire is asking questions you cannot answer.
- Your business could not operate for long without one particular system.
- You moved your systems to the cloud and assumed backup came with them.
What you get out of it
- A file somebody deleted this morning comes back without a project.
- You know what a restore actually involves here, because we have done one.
- Ransomware becomes a recovery decision rather than a negotiation.
- Somebody can answer what would happen if a server failed tonight.
What we do about it
We start by finding out what your current backup actually covers, because it is rarely what people believe it covers. A database that was open at the time of the copy, cloud data nobody realized was excluded, and one server that quietly stopped reporting months ago are all common findings.
Then we set recovery targets with you in plain terms: how much work you can afford to lose, and how long you can afford to be down. Those two numbers decide the design and the cost, and they are business decisions rather than technical ones.
After that it is monitored and tested. A backup nobody checks is a belief rather than a protection, so we restore from it on a schedule and tell you the result whether or not it is good news.
What is included
A review of what is actually protected
What is being copied, what is being missed, and how far back you could go if you had to.
Recovery targets, agreed in plain terms
How much work you can lose and how long you can be down, decided by you rather than assumed by us.
Local and off-site copies
One copy on site for speed and one held elsewhere, so a fire or a flood is not also a data loss.
Copies an attacker cannot quietly delete
Ransomware goes looking for backups first. Yours are held so that reaching your network is not the same as reaching them.
Tested restores, on a schedule
We restore from backup deliberately and record the result, so the first real test is not an emergency.
A written continuity plan
Who does what, in what order, and who gets told. A plan that lives in one person's head is not a plan.
How it works, step by step
- We work out what has to come back, and in what orderNot everything matters equally. The line-of-business system and the mail come first, and the folder nobody has opened since 2019 does not.
- We back it up where a fire cannot reach both copiesOn site for speed, off site for survival, and encrypted in both places. The rule is that no single accident can take the original and the copy.
- We restore from it on purposeOn a schedule, and we tell you the result whether or not it is good news. A backup nobody has restored from is a belief rather than a protection.
- We write down what happens when it is neededWho is called, what comes back first, and where people work from while it does. That document is worth more at the time than any piece of software.
Cloud applications are not backed up just because they are in the cloud
This is the assumption we correct most often, and it applies to every cloud system you run rather than just to one. Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and QuickBooks are all built to survive their own outages. None of them is built to undo what somebody in your business did on a Tuesday. Deleted mail, an overwritten shared drive, a bad import that rewrites thousands of records, and a leaver who empties their own account are all valid instructions as far as the vendor is concerned, so they are replicated faithfully everywhere your data lives. Keeping an independent copy is straightforward, inexpensive work. Discovering nobody had one is neither.
Common questions
How is this priced?
Per protected device and per server, with the storage sized to how much data you actually hold and how far back you want to be able to reach.
We will tell you what a longer retention period costs before you choose it, rather than discovering it on a renewal.
How do we know the backup is working?
Because somebody looked. We monitor for failures and restore from backup on a schedule rather than waiting for an emergency to find out. You get the result either way, including the months where something failed.
Are our cloud applications already backed up?
Not in the way most people mean, and this is true of Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and your finance system alike. The vendor keeps the service available and holds deleted items for a limited window, which covers a mistake noticed quickly. Recovering records somebody cleared out last quarter is a separate product doing a separate job.
How long would it take to get us running again?
That depends on the design, which is why we agree on the target first. A recovery measured in hours and one measured in days cost different amounts, and choosing between them is your decision to make with the numbers in front of you.
Often paired with
What clients usually need alongside this
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Cybersecurity Services
Layered protection that is watched around the clock, so a bad day stays a bad hour.
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Cloud & Microsoft 365
Your people reach their work from anywhere, on tenants that are configured, licensed, and backed up properly.
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Managed IT Support
Your staff get help from people who know your systems, and your technology stops being the reason work stops.
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