Backup & Disaster Recovery · Burlington, Ontario
Backup and disaster recovery for Burlington organizations
Immutable, monitored backup with recovery objectives that are defined, tested and documented — so recovery is a procedure rather than an experiment.
What this covers
- Immutable offsite and cloud backup
- Defined RTO and RPO per system
- Continuous verification and scheduled restore testing
- Cloud failover for critical workloads
- Microsoft 365 and SaaS data protection
- Written business continuity planning
01Reality check
Most organizations discover their backup gap during the incident
Backups fail quietly. Nobody notices until the restore that was assumed to exist is attempted under pressure.
The common failures are consistent: a job that has been erroring for months with alerts going to a departed employee's mailbox, a local appliance encrypted alongside everything else, retention too short to reach back before the intrusion started, or a restore that technically works but takes four days when the business can absorb four hours.
We design backwards from the business. Which systems must return first, how much data loss is tolerable for each, and how long the organization can operate without them. Those answers become explicit recovery objectives, and the technical design follows from them.
Recovery is then proven rather than assumed. Verification runs continuously, restores are tested on a schedule, and results are reported — including the failures, because those are the ones worth knowing about in advance.
02Design
How protection is layered
Multiple copies across multiple locations, with at least one that cannot be altered.
Local backup
Fast onsite copies for the routine cases — a deleted file, a corrupted database, a failed drive — where speed of restore matters more than distance.
Immutable offsite copy
Cloud-held backups that cannot be modified or deleted within the retention window, including by an attacker holding administrative credentials.
Cloud failover
Critical servers replicated to Azure or an equivalent platform so operations can resume in the cloud while the primary site is rebuilt.
SaaS data protection
Independent backup of Microsoft 365 mail, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams, which the platform itself does not protect against deletion or ransomware.
Verification and testing
Automated integrity checks on every job, scheduled full restore tests, and an annual failover exercise documented for insurers and auditors.
Continuity planning
The non-technical half: communication plans, alternate working arrangements, vendor contacts and decision authority, written down before it is needed.
03Services
What we deliver and manage
Designed, implemented and monitored as an ongoing control rather than a one-time install.
- Backup and recovery capability audit
- RTO and RPO definition per system
- Immutable cloud backup deployment
- Server, workstation and virtual machine protection
- Database and application-aware backup
- Microsoft 365 and SaaS backup
- Azure Site Recovery and cloud failover
- Continuous monitoring and daily verification
- Scheduled restore testing with written results
- Ransomware recovery planning and rehearsal
- Business continuity and communication planning
- Retention policy aligned to legal and sector obligations
FAQCommon questions
Questions Burlington organizations ask
What is the difference between backup and disaster recovery?
Backup is a copy of data. Disaster recovery is the ability to restore systems and operations within a defined recovery time objective and recovery point objective. Many organizations have the first and assume it delivers the second, which is discovered to be untrue at the worst possible moment.
How often should backups be tested?
Automated verification should run continuously, with a documented full restore test at least quarterly and a failover exercise annually. An untested backup is a hypothesis, not a control — and it is the first thing an insurer asks about after an incident.
What is immutable backup and why does it matter?
Immutable backups cannot be altered or deleted for a defined retention period, even with administrative credentials. Modern ransomware deliberately targets backup systems first, so immutability is what separates a recoverable event from a paid ransom.
How quickly could we recover from ransomware?
It depends on the recovery objectives designed into the environment. With immutable offsite backup and cloud failover configured and tested, critical systems typically return within hours. With tape or an unverified local appliance, the honest answer is often days, and sometimes never.
NEXTRelated capabilities
Recovery depends on the wider environment
Backup is one control among several — these are the ones it relies on most.
Providing Two Decades of IT Experience
Request an IT assessment for your Burlington organization
We review your current environment, security posture, cloud footprint and support model, then outline what to fix first and what it should cost.