Get your files back, and your office back to work

The backup you have may not be the one you need

In our first look at a new client's systems, backup is frequently where things are thinnest. It may be a drive plugged into the server that ransomware would encrypt along with everything else. It may cover the shared drive but not Microsoft 365 email, the billing database or the laptops attorneys take to court. The alert emails may go to someone who left two years ago. None of this shows until the day you try to restore.

Why retention matters here

Lawrenceville's core industries keep records for a long time. Law firms hold client files and trust account records well after a matter closes. Medical practices keep patient records for years under state law and their own policies. Title and closing offices may need a file from a past transaction when a question comes up at resale. A good backup does more than survive one bad night. It holds the right data, for the right length of time, in a form you can actually open.

What we plan for

• Ransomware: the event most likely to force a complete rebuild. Criminals hunt for backup systems and wipe them before encrypting anything else.
• Hardware failure: servers, storage boxes and laptop drives wear out, and rarely at a convenient time.
• Mistakes: a deleted client folder, an overwritten spreadsheet or a sync error that removed the only copy.
• Storms and power: metro Atlanta gets severe thunderstorms, ice and the remnants of tropical systems. Power in and around Lawrenceville comes from the city's own electric utility, Georgia Power, Jackson EMC or Walton EMC depending on the address, and a long outage can corrupt databases on equipment without battery protection.
• Building trouble: a leak in an older building near the Square, a fire next door or a break-in can destroy the server along with any drive stored in the same room.

How we build it

• Full coverage: servers, important workstations, Microsoft 365 email and files, Teams and line-of-business databases like case or practice management.
• Several copies: one copy kept on site so small restores are fast, and a second held in a cloud data center in case the office itself is lost, in line with the 3-2-1 approach.
• Protected copies: immutable or offline backups that someone with stolen admin access can't erase.
• Daily checks: a person reviews backup results each business day and fixes failures rather than just logging them.
• Scheduled test restores: we restore files and whole systems as tests and record how long it took, so your recovery time is a known number.
• Retention you choose: how long each type of data is kept, set to match your record-keeping needs.

Recovery is about people, too

Restoring data is half the job. The rest is getting staff productive again. Your written plan covers who calls whom, where people work if the office is closed, how phones are forwarded, what comes back first and how clients or patients are told. For offices already using laptops, Microsoft 365 and cloud phones, staff can often keep working from home while the office is repaired. We check that this works before you have to rely on it.

If even a few hours offline would be costly, we can keep standby copies of key servers in the cloud that start up quickly. For many smaller offices, a protected offsite backup and a tested restore process is enough. We recommend what suits your risk and budget.

Power protection

Brownouts and brief power cuts quietly damage equipment and databases. We size and monitor battery backups for servers, firewalls and switches, set equipment to shut down cleanly during long outages and replace batteries before they wear out.

Questions about backup & recovery