Backup and recovery for a river city

Backup and recovery you have actually tested

We back up servers, key workstations and cloud data, including Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace mailboxes and files that many owners assume are protected automatically. Copies are stored off-site and kept out of reach of ransomware that might otherwise encrypt your backups right along with your live data. We set retention periods to fit your contracts, since some clients expect project files to be recoverable long after the work wraps up.

Restores are tested on a schedule and the results are kept, which is exactly the proof customer assessments and insurers ask for. We also write a short recovery plan covering who to call, what gets restored first, and how staff keep working if a building is unusable, whether from a flood on the riverfront or a long power outage.

Planning for the Ohio, the Mill Creek and the spring storms

The 1937 flood still marks the city's memory, with water reaching deep into downtown and the West End, and the Ohio still rises above flood stage in many years. Businesses on the riverfront, in the Mill Creek valley and in low-lying parts of Newport and Covington are the most exposed. Floodwalls protect much of the core, but flooded roads and basements can still close a building for days.

Severe weather is the more frequent threat. A tornado tore through Blue Ash and Montgomery in April 1999, and damaging thunderstorms and straight-line winds roll through the region every spring and summer. A recovery plan here should assume that a building may be unreachable or without power for a while, not merely that a single server might fail on an ordinary afternoon.

What gets backed up, and where it goes

We protect on-site servers with image backups so they can be rebuilt on new hardware or run temporarily from a recovery copy. Key workstations, such as an engineer's CAD machine or the controller's PC with local accounting files, are included too. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace mail, OneDrive, SharePoint and Shared Drives are backed up separately, since built-in retention is limited and not designed for long-term recovery.

Copies go to storage outside the region, so a single flood or power event cannot reach both your office and your backups. Immutability settings block deletion or alteration for a defined period, even by an administrator, which defeats ransomware operators who go hunting for backups first. Retention matches your contracts, since some brand clients expect project archives to remain recoverable for years.

Proof that restores work

Supplier assessments and cyber insurance applications increasingly ask when you last tested a restore and what happened. We run file, mailbox and full-system restore tests on a fixed schedule and record the date, what was restored, how long it took and any problems that turned up. That log becomes evidence you can attach, rather than a statement nobody can verify.

The recovery plan itself is brief. It ranks systems by priority, names who can make decisions and approve spending, lists vendor and carrier contacts, and explains where people work if the building is closed. For companies with sites in more than one state, it also notes which location can absorb work from the others. We revisit it each year and after any significant change to your systems.