Almost every business we meet says they have backups. Far fewer have tried restoring from one. Backups fail quietly: a full disk, an expired licence, a password change or a folder that was never selected. You usually find out on the worst possible day.
Follow the 3-2-1 rule
A simple rule of thumb that still holds up:
- 3 copies of your important data
- on 2 different types of storage
- with 1 copy offsite
Today we add one more requirement: at least one copy should be immutable, so it cannot be encrypted or deleted by ransomware, even if an attacker gets administrator access.
Microsoft 365 needs its own backup
Microsoft keeps its service running, but protecting your data is largely your responsibility. Deleted emails and files are only kept for a limited time, and a compromised account can delete or encrypt data that then syncs everywhere. A dedicated Microsoft 365 backup keeps independent copies of mail, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams.
Test, then test again
A backup plan should include:
- Scheduled test restores of individual files and entire servers.
- Monitoring and alerts when a backup job fails, sent to someone who will act on them.
- A written recovery plan that lists what gets restored first, where it gets restored to and who to call.
- Known recovery times. If restoring your main server takes two days, the business needs to know that before it happens.
How we handle it
For our managed clients, we monitor every backup job, run regular test restores and report the results. If you would like to know whether your current backups would actually get you running again, book a free consultation and we will check.