A green tick on a backup job is not a recovery plan. We still get called when someone deleted a folder on Thursday and the only copy is a backup that has never been restored. ECOMX runs backup and disaster recovery from the Pretoria office on Bronkhorst Street and the Sandton office on 5th Street in Sandown.
The tool we put on most sites is URBackup, for file backups and image backups on Windows and Linux. Where a client already pays for another product and it is healthy, we do not rip it out for the sake of a logo. The job is the restore, not the brochure.
A list of what must come back, and in what order. Mail, the finance PC and the file server are rarely equal.
How far back you can go. A 7-day disk that also holds the ransomware is not a history.
A copy that does not sit on the same server, the same cupboard, or the same UPS.
The tool we put on most sites is URBackup, for file backups and image backups on Windows and Linux.
The 3-2-1 idea is still the one we use because it is easy to explain to a director: three copies, two kinds of storage, one of them somewhere else. On a small site that might be the server, a local URBackup disk, and an off-site copy. On a site with more to lose, the off-site copy is a second location, not a USB stick in a laptop bag.
If the backup share is mapped as a drive letter that every PC can write to, ransomware will encrypt it too. We keep the backup target off the everyday network path and limit who can delete it. That is dull work. It is also the difference between a bad week and a dead company. A backup that starts at 18:00 and dies at 18:40 because the inverter only carries the server, not the backup disk, is a failed job. Put the disk on the same power as the server, or move the job to a time the site is actually up. A trip in the building DB does the same damage a scheduled outage used to.
We read the jobs, try a restore of a file and a full system where that is safe, and tell you what would still be missing if the server room went quiet on a Friday. You get that in writing before anyone talks about a new box. If the current setup is fine, we say so. Recovery time is not a single number. The homepage SLA figure of 98.9% is for systems on a measured agreement. A file restore and a full server rebuild are different jobs, and the SLA should say which one you are buying.
Often enough that the person who would do it in a panic has done it calm. For most of our clients that is a scheduled test, not a once-off the day the system was installed.
Only if it cannot restore what you need. URBackup is the default we know well. A working system stays.
Yes. Pretoria and Sandton are far enough apart to be useful copies of each other, if the link and the retention are planned. A copy in the same rack is not off-site.
A backup tool does not make you compliant. You still need to know what personal information you hold, who can restore it, and how long you keep it. We can line the technical controls up with what your POPIA officer asks for. We do not replace legal advice.