What goes wrong without a real plan
When we assess a new client, the backup is often the weakest part of the setup. It was installed years ago, the alert emails go to someone who left, and it covers the server but not Microsoft 365, the laptops or the cloud accounting system. Sometimes it's an external drive that's been plugged into the same computer for years, where ransomware would encrypt it along with everything else.
The events that test backups in Cherokee County
- Ransomware and account takeover: the most common reason a small business needs a full restore. Criminals look for backups first and try to delete them.
- Hardware failure: servers and storage devices wear out, usually at the worst time.
- Human error: a deleted folder, an overwritten spreadsheet or a synced file that removed the original.
- Weather and power: Cherokee County has been included in federal disaster or emergency declarations for severe storms, ice and the remnants of hurricanes several times since 2000, most recently in 2024 and 2026. Power in the county comes from Georgia Power, Cobb EMC, Sawnee EMC or Amicalola EMC depending on the address, and restoration after a storm can take hours or days. Rural roads in the north and east of the county lose lines to falling trees more easily than the I-575 corridor does.
- Building problems: a burst pipe, a fire in a neighboring suite or a break-in can take out the equipment and the backup drive sitting beside it.
How we set it up
- Everything that matters: servers, key workstations, Microsoft 365 email, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, and line-of-business databases.
- More than one copy: a local copy for fast restores and an offsite cloud copy in case the building is lost. We follow the 3-2-1 approach: three copies, two types of storage, one offsite.
- Protected from attackers: immutable or offline backups that can't be deleted or encrypted by someone who gets into your network.
- Monitored daily: a person checks backup results every business day, and failures are fixed, not just logged.
- Tested on a schedule: we restore files and full systems as a test and record how long it took, so you know your real recovery time.
Disaster recovery is more than data
Getting files back is half the job. The other half is getting people working. Your written recovery plan covers who to call, where staff work if the office is unusable, how phones get forwarded, which systems come back first and how to reach clients or patients. For a business whose staff already work partly from home, the answer is often simple: laptops, Microsoft 365 and cloud phones keep running even if the office is dark. We make sure that's true before you need it.
For businesses that can't be down for long, we can keep standby copies of critical servers in the cloud that can be started within hours. For others, a solid offsite backup and a tested restore process are enough. We'll recommend what fits your risk and budget.
Battery and power protection
Brief outages and power surges cause more damage than people expect. We size and monitor battery backups for servers, firewalls and network switches, set them to shut equipment down cleanly in a long outage, and replace batteries before they fail. It's not glamorous, but it prevents a lot of corrupted databases.
Questions about backup & disaster recovery
Doesn't Microsoft back up our 365 data?
Microsoft keeps its service running and holds deleted items for a limited time. It doesn't protect you against ransomware that encrypts synced files, a long-ago deletion or a departed employee's mailbox. A separate backup covers those.
How often do you test restores?
File-level restores are tested regularly, and full system recovery tests are scheduled at least once a year. You get a short report showing what was tested and how long it took.
