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IT/BAK — Backup & recovery

A backup you haven't restored is not a backup.

Every business we review says it has backups, and most do. A meaningful number could not have restored from them, and nobody knew — because restoring had never been attempted.

TOP/ — What we build

Three copies, and one of them out of reach.

The classic 3-2-1 rule with the modern addition that matters: at least one copy must be immutable or genuinely offline, because ransomware now hunts for reachable backup shares and encrypts those first.

Live data Server, workstations, mailboxes, accounts DB COPY 1 Local backup NAS or backup appliance FAST RESTORE — RTO IN MINUTES COPY 2 · DIFFERENT MEDIA Off-site, immutable OBJECT LOCK — CANNOT BE ALTERED OR DELETED COPY 3 · OFF-SITE Offline rotated disk PHYSICALLY DISCONNECTED · OPTIONAL RANSOMWARE REACHES THIS FAR — IT ENCRYPTS WHAT IT CAN WRITE TO RECOVERY COMES FROM HERE RESTORE TEST QUARTERLY — A BACKUP NOBODY HAS RESTORED FROM IS AN ASSUMPTION, AND THE FAILURES ARE ALWAYS SILENT ONES.
Fig. 3 — 3-2-1 backup topology for a small office

NUM/ — Two numbers first

Every real backup decision follows from these.

RPO

How much data can you afford to lose?

If backups run nightly at 2am and the server dies at 6pm, you have lost a working day. For a design studio that is irritating. For a business that takes payments it may be unacceptable, and you need something continuous instead.

RTO

How long can you be down?

"We restore from cloud backup" sounds fine until you work out that 800 GB over your office connection is a two-day download. If you must be running the same day, you need a local copy to restore from and the cloud copy is for the building-burns-down case.

Most businesses have never been asked these two questions. Answering them takes twenty minutes and determines the entire design — including how much you should be spending, which is often less than you fear and occasionally more than you hoped.

SVC/ — The work

What we do.

Backup audit
What is currently protected, what is not, and — the part that matters — whether a restore actually succeeds. We test it rather than reading the job status.
Design & implementation
Local target for fast restores, immutable off-site copy for the serious cases, retention set against your RPO and RTO rather than against a default.
Everything, not just files
Accounting and line-of-business databases backed up in a consistent state, mailboxes covered, server images taken. Open-file database copies that cannot be restored are the most common failure we find.
Ransomware resilience
Object lock on the off-site copy, backup credentials separated from domain accounts, and the backup target not sitting on the same segment as the workstations.
Restore testing
Quarterly file restores and an annual full-system test, with the result written down and dated. Included in support plans.
A written recovery plan
Who to call, in what order, and what to do — printed, because a recovery plan stored only on the file server you are trying to recover is a joke told at your own expense.

FAQ/ — Common questions

Questions we get asked.

We use Google Drive. Isn't that a backup?

No — it is sync, and the difference matters. Sync replicates your changes everywhere immediately, and ransomware encrypting your files is a change. So is a deletion, and so is someone overwriting the master price list. Version history on business plans has saved plenty of people, but it is a limited safety net: retention is shorter than the time it usually takes to notice corruption, and it covers only what is in the synced folder — not your accounting database, not the server, not the mailboxes.

How much does backup cost to run?

The infrastructure is cheaper than people expect. A local backup target is a one-off equipment cost, and off-site cloud storage for a typical small office runs to a few hundred to a couple of thousand rupees a month depending on volume. The recurring cost that matters is somebody verifying it works, which is included in our support plans.

What is immutable backup and do we need it?

It means a copy that cannot be altered or deleted for a set period, even by someone holding valid credentials — object lock, in cloud storage terms. You need it because modern ransomware specifically looks for reachable backup shares and encrypts those first. A backup drive permanently mounted as B:\ is one of the things it will find. It costs essentially nothing extra to enable.

How often should backups be tested?

A file-level restore quarterly, and a full system restore to spare hardware or a VM annually. This is dull and it is the entire point — a restore test is the only thing that distinguishes a backup system from a backup-shaped expense. It is how you find out that the database was being copied as an open file and the copies are unusable, or that the job has been failing silently since a password change in March.

CTA/ — Backup work

When did you last restore something?

If the answer is 'never' or 'not sure', that's worth half a day of somebody's attention. A backup audit tells you whether what you have would survive a bad Monday.

Book a backup audit →