Backup & Disaster Recovery for Boston Businesses

Why isn’t having a backup enough?

A backup only matters if it actually restores. Backups often fail quietly: a job stops after a password change, a drive fills up, or a new folder never gets added.

That is why we verify backup jobs as part of ordinary IT care. We check that jobs ran, that they captured the data you expect, and that failures get noticed and fixed rather than ignored.

What does a quarterly test restore involve?

A test restore means actually pulling files or systems back from a backup and confirming they open and work. We do this on a quarterly schedule for clients who include it in their plan.

• Pick a sample of important files, folders or a whole system to restore.
• Restore it to a safe location so nothing in daily use is overwritten.
• Open the files and confirm they are complete and current.
• Note how long the restore took and fix anything that went wrong.

A test restore turns “we think we’re covered” into something you know.

What are isolated, verified restore points?

They are copies of your data that have been checked and are kept apart from your everyday systems. If ransomware or an intruder reaches your network, an isolated copy is much harder for them to change or delete.

Attackers increasingly go after backups as part of an attack, especially backups stored on an ordinary shared drive or an unprotected NAS. Keeping at least one copy off the main network, or on storage designed to resist tampering, is one of the most useful protections a small business can have.

For firms that hold a lot of client data, IBM FlashSystem establishes verified restore points and isolates them from active systems. Features such as IBM Safeguarded Copy keep immutable snapshots that cannot be changed by ransomware. We are an authorized IBM reseller and offer a free cyber resilience assessment.

What do RTO and RPO mean in plain words?

RPO is how much recent work you can afford to lose, and RTO is how long you can afford to be down. Together they decide what kind of backup and recovery setup makes sense.

• RPO (Recovery Point Objective): if your last good backup is from last night, you could lose today’s work. If that is not acceptable, you need more frequent backups or snapshots.
• RTO (Recovery Time Objective): how quickly your office needs email, files and key applications back. A law firm in the middle of a case may need very different answers than a small nonprofit.

We help you set realistic targets and then build a setup that can meet them.

What goes into a disaster recovery plan?

A disaster recovery plan is a short, written guide to who does what, in what order, when something serious goes wrong. It should be simple enough to follow under stress.

• A list of your critical systems and data, and where the backups live.
• Your RTO and RPO targets for each one.
• Step-by-step recovery instructions and the order to restore systems.
• Contact details for staff, vendors, your insurer and your IT provider.
• A record of test restores and when the plan was last reviewed.

For healthcare offices, law firms and accounting practices, tested backups and written recovery steps also support compliance requirements such as HIPAA and Massachusetts 201 CMR 17.00.