A backup only counts if it restores
Many businesses discover their backups were failing only on the day they need them. Our approach starts from the restore: what you need back, how quickly and how recent it must be. Then we design backups to meet that, and we prove they work.
What we protect
- Servers and the applications on them, including accounting and practice management systems.
- Microsoft 365: mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, backed up separately from Microsoft.
- Key workstations that hold data that cannot live anywhere else, such as CAD stations.
- Line-of-business data in hosted or cloud systems, where the vendor allows it.
Monitored every day
Every backup job is monitored. A failed or skipped job becomes a ticket that an engineer works, not a silent email in a folder nobody reads.
Test restores
On a schedule, we restore files, mailboxes and whole systems to prove the backup is usable. Results are recorded and reviewed with you. Insurers and auditors increasingly ask for this evidence.
Ransomware and outages
Ransomware tries to encrypt backups along with everything else. We keep copies separate from your network, protected from deletion and from the accounts that run your everyday systems. Off-site copies also protect you from fire, flood and long power outages.
Recovery planning
A written recovery plan answers the questions nobody wants to figure out mid-crisis: who decides, what comes back first, how staff keep working and who tells clients. We write it with you and update it as systems change.
The 3-2-1 rule, in plain language
A sound backup plan keeps at least three copies of important data, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy away from your office. We add one more rule for the ransomware era: at least one copy must be protected from deletion or change, even by an administrator account. That way an attacker who gets into your network, or a flood that takes out your building, still leaves you a clean copy to restore from.
Microsoft 365 needs its own backup
Microsoft keeps its service running, but it does not promise to restore a mailbox someone emptied or a SharePoint library that ransomware encrypted through a synced laptop. Deleted items are only kept for a limited time, and retention settings are not the same as a backup. We back up Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams to separate storage, so you can bring back a single file, a whole mailbox or a site as it looked on a chosen day.
Planning around what you can afford to lose
Two questions shape every recovery plan. How much recent work could you afford to lose: the last day, or only the last few minutes? And how long can each system be down before the business really hurts? The answers are different for an accounting file share, an ERP server and a marketing laptop. We agree them with you system by system, then choose backup frequency, storage and recovery methods that match, so you are not paying for speed you do not need or missing it where you do.
What a recovery plan includes
A written recovery plan is short and practical. It lists your critical systems in the order they come back, where each backup lives, who makes the decisions, how staff keep working in the meantime and the phone numbers for your insurer, bank and key vendors. We keep a copy outside your network, review it each year and walk through it with you, so it works when the people who wrote it are not in the room.
Laptops and remote staff
Work no longer lives only on the server. Laptops that travel, home offices and files saved to the desktop all need protection too. We back up key workstations to the cloud wherever they are, and we steer important files into OneDrive and SharePoint, where they are covered by the Microsoft 365 backup. If a laptop is lost, stolen or dies on the road, the person gets a replacement with their files restored, and the lost device is encrypted so the data on it stays private.
What it costs to skip
The cost of a missing backup is rarely the data alone. It is the days of work spent recreating invoices and files, the clients who wait, the ransom demand you cannot refuse and the cyber insurance claim that is harder to make when backups were never tested. Reliable, tested backups are one of the least expensive ways to take that risk off the table.
Where we work
We protect data for businesses in 20 major US cities and other US cities, many of which face hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, winter storms or earthquakes. Each city page covers the local risks.