Managed Services

Backup & Disaster Recovery

Ransomware or a dead server stops you invoicing, quoting and delivering, and the cost is counted in lost trading days. A backup nobody has ever restored is not a backup, it is a hope, so we monitor yours, test the restores, and document exactly how quickly you can be back up.

Testedrestores carried out on a schedule, rather than asserted
Offsiteencrypted copies held separately from your building
Documentedrecovery time and recovery point agreed in advance
The failure modes we find most often when we take over an existing backup setup, and how to check yours this week.

What this protects

Trading continuity, and the data you cannot recreate

A backup is not an IT exercise. It is the difference between a bad morning and a business that does not reopen.

The investment you have already made

Years of records, accounts and correspondence. Recreating it is not a cost you can put on a quote.

Revenue while you are down

Every hour off-line is invoicing, quoting and deliveries not happening. Recovery time is lost revenue, counted in hours.

Proof, not hope

We restore from your backups on a schedule and give you the result. Most businesses have never once tested theirs.

The gap between having backups and being recoverable

Almost every business we meet already has something they call a backup. Far fewer have ever tried to restore from it, and the ones who have usually discover the problem on the worst possible day.

Common failures we find: the job silently stopped reporting three months ago and nobody noticed; the backup only covers files and not the server configuration; the encryption key is stored on the server being backed up; the restore takes eleven hours when the business can only tolerate two.

Our job is to close that gap. We monitor the jobs, we run test restores, and we agree with you what recovery actually needs to look like.

What we put in place

Image and file backup

Whole-system images plus granular file recovery, so you can restore one spreadsheet or an entire server.

Offsite and cloud copies

Encrypted copies held away from your premises, so a fire, flood or theft is not a data-loss event.

Test restores

Scheduled restore tests into an isolated environment, with the results documented for compliance purposes.

Ransomware-aware

Immutable and versioned copies that cannot be encrypted by the same attack that hit your live systems.

Agreed RTO and RPO

We agree how fast you need to be back and how much data you can afford to lose, then build to that number.

Written recovery plan

A documented plan that says who does what, in what order, when the worst happens.

Questions we will ask at your free health check

  • When did you last successfully restore anything from backup, and what was the result?
  • If your main server died now, how long could the business realistically stay down?
  • Are your backup copies held somewhere other than the building they protect?
  • Do you know where the encryption key is stored, and is it somewhere the attackers cannot reach?
  • Does the backup cover your Microsoft 365 mailboxes and SharePoint as well as your local files?

Questions we get asked about Backup & Disaster Recovery

No, and this is the most common misconception we come across. Microsoft operates a shared responsibility model. They keep the service running, but recovering a deleted mailbox or a ransomware-encrypted SharePoint site is your responsibility. It needs a dedicated backup product.

Typically every fifteen minutes to hourly for critical systems, once daily for the rest. The right frequency follows from how much data you can afford to lose.

It depends entirely on what failed. That is exactly why we document it. We would rather give you a realistic number during a planning meeting than an optimistic one during an incident.

Yes. We handle on-premise, cloud and hybrid environments, and mixed setups are common.

Backup and recovery form part of most frameworks, including Cyber Essentials and GDPR. Our documented test restores give you the evidence auditors ask for.

Not sure whether you need backup & disaster recovery?

Book a free 60-minute health check. We will tell you what you actually need, including when the answer is nothing.