The backups we usually find
When we look at a new client's backups, the story is often the same. A backup was set up years ago by someone no longer around. Error emails land in a dead inbox. The file server is included, while Microsoft 365, staff laptops and the hosted accounting app are left out. Sometimes the whole system is an external drive hanging off the very server it copies, ready to be encrypted right along with it. Nobody has tried a full restore.
What tests a backup in Atlanta
- Ransomware and account takeover: the leading cause of whole-office restores we handle. Modern ransomware crews hunt down backup consoles and wipe them before launching encryption.
- City infrastructure: the 2024 water main breaks closed Midtown businesses for days, and Fulton County was covered by federal disaster declarations for Hurricane Helene in 2024 and the 2014 winter storms, and by a federal emergency declaration for the January 2026 winter storm. Many in-town workers still remember January 2014, when a few inches of snow left commuters stranded overnight on frozen interstates.
- Building events: a sprinkler line bursting on the floor above, scheduled power shutdowns for building maintenance, or a fire in a neighboring suite. In many towers the backup generator covers elevators and life safety, not tenant server closets.
- Hardware failure: drives, servers and storage units wear out, and media storage in creative studios runs hot and hard.
- Everyday slips: a paralegal drags a matter folder into the trash, a budget file gets saved over, or OneDrive sync removes the only good copy.
How we build it
- Coverage of what you actually use: servers, important desktops, Exchange Online mailboxes, SharePoint sites, OneDrive and Teams files, practice and accounting databases and, for creative firms, the project storage that holds active work.
- Separate locations: an on-site appliance for fast recovery and a cloud copy stored in another region, so a problem in your building or your part of the city doesn't touch both. Three copies, two kinds of storage, one offsite.
- Copies attackers can't erase: immutable cloud storage and separate credentials, so someone who gets into your network can't delete your way back.
- Daily checks by a person: every business day someone reviews backup results and fixes failures rather than just logging them.
- Scheduled restore tests: we bring back sample files and complete machines on a calendar and time each drill, so you know your real restore speed.
Large files need their own plan
Film, post-production and design firms on the Westside often hold tens of terabytes of active project data. Pushing that to the cloud over a typical office connection could take weeks, and pulling it back after a failure could take just as long. For those clients we combine fast local backup with a staged offsite copy, and we plan which projects need to be restored first so editors can get back to work while the rest catches up.
The human side of recovery
Restored files don't help if nobody knows what to do next. The plan we write with you names the decision-maker, the fallback work location, the phone forwarding steps, the restore order for each system and the message that goes to clients or patients. If your staff already carry laptops and live in Microsoft 365, a shuttered building usually just means a remote workday. We check that this really works, including printing, phones and access to the systems that still live on site, before you need it.
Where a single afternoon of downtime would cost real money, we replicate key servers to cloud standby machines that can be powered on fast. Plenty of firms don't need that, and do fine with a good offsite copy and a rehearsed restore. We will recommend what matches your risk and your budget.
Power protection in the suite
Short outages and voltage dips are common in older buildings and during building maintenance. Each server, firewall and switch gets a properly sized UPS, configured to power gear off gracefully when the outage drags on. We watch battery health remotely and swap packs on schedule. Boring, yes, but it spares you databases damaged by an abrupt shutdown.
Questions about backup & recovery
Why pay to back up Microsoft 365?
Microsoft's recycle bins and retention windows are short and narrow. Files encrypted on a laptop and synced up, items removed long ago and mailboxes of people who left can be gone for good without a third-party copy.
How can we be sure our backups would come back?
Because we practice. Spot file restores happen often, entire servers get rebuilt from backup at minimum yearly, and you receive a note listing each drill and its duration.
