What backup has to cover now
Ten years ago, backing up a small office meant copying one server to a drive. In Johns Creek today, the data is spread out. Patient charts may sit in a cloud practice system, client files in SharePoint, email in Exchange Online, and a year of work on a laptop in someone's home office. A real backup plan starts with a list of where your data lives, then makes sure each place has a copy you control.
The events we plan for
- Ransomware: the event most likely to force a complete rebuild. Modern gangs hunt for the backup console and wipe it before they launch the encryption.
- Account takeover: a hijacked mailbox can be emptied or rules set to hide mail. Without a separate copy, some of that is gone.
- Everyday mistakes: a deleted client folder, an overwritten spreadsheet or a sync that wiped the original.
- Hardware failure: servers, storage boxes and laptop drives wear out, usually on a busy day.
- Weather, power and the river: Fulton County has been part of federal disaster or emergency declarations for the September 2009 floods, the 2014 ice storm, Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Helene. A downed line or a dark building still stops work if your systems only live there.
- Problems next door: a sprinkler leak or fire in a neighboring suite can ruin the server and the backup drive sitting next to it.
How we build it
- Full coverage: servers, key PCs and laptops, Microsoft 365 mail, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, and the databases behind your practice or accounting software.
- Copies in more than one place: one nearby for fast file recovery and one in a remote data center in case the suite itself is lost. That is the familiar 3-2-1 rule.
- Copies attackers can't erase: immutable storage, so even someone with stolen admin access can't delete or encrypt the backups.
- Checked every business day: a person reviews backup results. Failures are fixed, not just noted.
- Proven by drills: on a set calendar we pull files and entire machines back from backup and time the job. That timing, not a sales sheet, becomes your recovery estimate.
Records you are required to keep
Many Johns Creek businesses have legal reasons to keep data for years. Medical practices must protect health records and, under the HIPAA Security Rule, keep a data backup plan, a disaster recovery plan and an emergency mode operations plan. Investment advisers and other financial firms have record-keeping rules of their own. We match retention settings to those needs and keep a record of tests, so you can show the plan works rather than just say it exists.
The home office gap
With so many people here working from home, laptops hold more company data than they used to. OneDrive sync helps, but sync is not backup. If a file is encrypted or deleted, the change syncs too. We back up company laptops directly, wherever they are, and we make sure files saved to the desktop are not left out.
Getting people working again
Getting files back doesn't reopen the doors by itself. Staff need to know what to do. Your written plan names the person in charge, lists the order in which systems return, explains how the main number gets rerouted, says where people should work if the suite is off limits and sets out how patients or clients hear from you. For a firm already on Microsoft 365 and cloud phones, the honest answer is often that most staff can keep working from home. We test that so it holds up on the day.
Some firms can't afford to be closed for a day. For them we keep a ready-to-run replica of the critical server in a cloud data center, so it can be switched on while the office hardware is repaired. Many smaller offices don't need that. A protected offsite copy and a restore drill they have actually practiced cover their risk at a lower cost. We lay out both options with prices so you can choose.
Power protection
Flickers and surges ruin more equipment than storms do. Every server, firewall and core switch we look after sits on a UPS that we monitor. If the power stays off, the UPS tells the server to close its databases and power down in order, which avoids a corrupt file on restart. UPS batteries wear out in a few years, so we track their age and swap them before they quit.
Questions about backup & disaster recovery
Isn't OneDrive already a backup?
No. OneDrive syncs changes, including deletions and encrypted files. It also keeps deleted items only for a limited time. A separate backup lets you go back further and recover from ransomware.
How do we know the backups would work?
Because we try them. Sample files are pulled back every month, and every year we bring up at least one complete system from backup. A one-page summary records each drill and its timing.
