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Backup & Disaster Recovery

Business Backup & Disaster Recovery Guide

Most businesses think they have backups. Far fewer have ever tested whether those backups actually restore. This guide explains the building blocks of a modern backup and disaster recovery (BDR) strategy in plain English, so you can have an informed conversation with your IT provider or audit the one you already have.

Published April 20, 2026 10 min read By Joshua Arimoro Greater Sudbury & Ontario

The 3-2-1 rule still applies

The classic 3-2-1 backup rule remains the gold standard: keep at least three copies of your data, on two different media types, with one copy off-site. Modern best practice extends this to 3-2-1-1-0 adding one immutable (cannot be modified) copy and zero recovery errors verified by testing.

Recovery time and recovery point objectives

RTO Recovery Time Objective

How long can your business tolerate being down? An RTO of 4 hours means you've designed and paid for systems that can restore service within 4 hours of a disaster.

RPO Recovery Point Objective

How much data can you afford to lose? An RPO of 1 hour means backups run hourly and you accept losing up to one hour of work in a worst-case scenario.

What needs to be backed up

  • On-premise file servers and databases
  • Workstations and laptops with locally stored business data
  • Microsoft 365 mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams
  • Line-of-business application data (accounting, ERP, CRM)
  • Cloud platforms most SaaS providers do not back up your data for you

When did you last test a restore?

We review what is backed up, how long recovery actually takes, and where the gaps sit between your data and a real outage.

Review My Backup Strategy

Ransomware-resilient backup design

Ransomware attackers actively hunt for and delete backups before encrypting production data. A modern backup must be immutable written once and locked from modification for a defined retention period so it cannot be deleted or encrypted by an attacker who has compromised admin credentials.

Test, document, and rehearse

  • Run full restore tests at least quarterly, not just file-level spot checks
  • Document the disaster recovery runbook with named owners and contact info
  • Conduct an annual tabletop exercise simulating an outage

Frequently asked questions

Isn't OneDrive a backup?

No. OneDrive and SharePoint are synchronization services if a file is deleted or encrypted by ransomware, the change syncs to the cloud. A dedicated Microsoft 365 backup with point-in-time recovery is required.

How long should I keep backups?

Most Ontario small businesses keep at least 30 days of daily backups plus 12 months of monthly snapshots. Industries with compliance requirements (legal, healthcare, finance) may need 7 years or longer.

How much does a proper backup solution cost?

Plan on $5-$15 per user per month for Microsoft 365 backup, plus $0.05-$0.15 per GB per month for off-site server backup storage. The cost is a small fraction of even one day of downtime for most businesses.

About the author

Joshua Arimoro

Joshua Arimoro is the Principal Consultant at Nickel City Tech Solutions, a managed IT and cybersecurity provider based in Lively, Ontario, serving businesses across Greater Sudbury and Northern Ontario. He works hands-on with Microsoft 365, server and network infrastructure, endpoint management, and backup and recovery for small and mid-sized organisations.

More about our team

Have you tested your backups recently?

We'll audit your existing backup setup, identify gaps, and document a recovery plan tailored to your business.

Request a Backup Audit 705-905-3658
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