Backup and disaster recovery · Southwest Florida
Backup and Disaster Recovery for Southwest Florida Businesses
Everybody has backups. Fewer people have tested restores.
NerdSquad Managed IT Services backs up your workstations, servers and cloud data, keeps immutable copies offsite and tests restores on a schedule, so a deleted folder, a dead server, ransomware or a hurricane is a recovery plan instead of a crisis.
Rule
3-2-1, with an immutable copy
Proof
Scheduled restore tests
Targets
RTO and RPO set with you
Local
Naples team, onsite when needed
01 · Plain English
What is backup and disaster recovery?
Backup and disaster recovery (BDR) is the combination of copying your data somewhere safe and having a tested plan to get the business running again when something breaks. Backup answers “do we have a copy?” Disaster recovery answers “how fast can we work again, and from where?”
Most small businesses have the first half. A drive in the closet, a sync folder, maybe a cloud service someone set up years ago. What’s usually missing is the second half: nobody has restored anything from it, nobody knows how long a full restore takes, and the copy sits on the same network ransomware would encrypt.
We’re a Managed Service Provider (MSP) in Naples, and backup is one of the services we watch every day. Failed jobs open tickets. Restores get tested. The plan gets written down.
What you get
💻
Workstation backup and rapid restore
Laptops and desktops backed up automatically, so a stolen laptop or a dead drive means a new machine and your files back, not a lost week.
🗄️
Server and file share backup
Image-level backups of servers and shared drives, so we can restore a single file or the whole machine.
☁️
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup
Your own copy of email, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams and Google Drive, plus Salesforce, Dropbox and Box. Restore one item or a whole account from any point in time, kept as long as you choose. The cloud keeps your data running; it isn’t the same as a backup you control.
🔒
Immutable, offsite copies
Following the 3-2-1 rule, at least one copy is offsite and immutable (write once, read many), so ransomware and accidental deletions can’t change it.
🧪
Scheduled restore testing
We restore real files and systems on a schedule and record the results. A backup you’ve never restored is a guess.
🎯
RTO and RPO planning
We agree with you how much data you can afford to lose and how long each system can be down, then size the backups to match.
📋
A written recovery plan
Who calls whom, what comes back first, where people work and how you reach clients. One document, kept current.
🛰️
Monitoring and alerts
Every backup job is monitored. A failure becomes a ticket for our team to fix, not a surprise six months later.
02 · Ctrl+Z for the whole office
What a restore actually looks like
Good backups give you choices. When something goes wrong, you pick a point in time from before the problem and bring things back from there. Here’s what that looks like after a ransomware hit on a file server.
Restore point picker
File server · Tuesday
10:14 a.m.
Files start getting encrypted
Ransomware detected · device isolated
Don’t restore
10:00 a.m.
Hourly snapshot
Immutable copy · last clean point
Restore here
9:00 a.m.
Hourly snapshot
Immutable copy
Verified
Mon 11:00 p.m.
Nightly backup
Offsite copy in a second region
Verified
Last Sunday
Scheduled restore test
Sample files restored and opened
Passed
Illustration. How far back you can go, and how close to the problem, depends on how often each system is backed up. That gap is your RPO.
Someone deleted the wrong folder
The most common restore by far, and usually the quickest.
Call, text, email or open a ticket and tell us what’s missing and roughly when it was last seen
We find the most recent good version and restore it to its original spot or a new folder
You check it, we close the ticket and note what happened
Version history in Microsoft 365 or Google Drive often covers the last few days; our backup covers what falls outside it.
Not sure your backups would work?
Tell us what you back up and how. We’ll check whether it would actually come back, and how long it would take.
03 · Two numbers that decide everything
RTO and RPO, explained without the jargon
Every backup plan is really two decisions. Get them right and the rest is configuration. Get them wrong and you either overspend on systems that can wait, or underspend on the one system you can’t work without.
RPO
Recovery point objective
How much data you can afford to lose, measured in time. If your RPO is one hour, backups run at least hourly. Most offices back up daily, with hourly backups for the systems that change all day.
RTO
Recovery time objective
How long a system can be down before it really hurts. Your practice software or trading platform may need hours; an old archive can wait days. RTO decides what comes back first.
We set both with you during onboarding, write them into your recovery plan and check them at each restore test. If a test shows we can’t meet a target, you’ll hear about it along with what it would take to close the gap.
04 · Southwest Florida
Hurricane season is a backup test you didn’t schedule
Storms don’t usually destroy data. They close offices, cut power and knock out internet for days. A business that can work from anywhere is in a much better spot than one with a server in a back room in a flood zone.
At least one backup copy stored outside Southwest Florida
Email, files and phones that work from home or a hotel
Laptops instead of desktops for the people who need to keep working
A pre-storm checklist: verify backups, shut down equipment safely, unplug and raise what you can
A written plan for who contacts clients, staff and vendors, and how
We can’t promise what a storm will do or how fast power and internet come back. We can make sure your data is somewhere the storm isn’t, and that the plan exists before it’s needed.
05 · How it works
From “I think we back up” to tested recovery
Most clients start with a backup assessment. It usually turns up at least one important system nobody was backing up.
01
Assess
We inventory what you have, where data lives, what’s backed up today and what isn’t, then agree RTO and RPO for each system.
02
Protect
We deploy backups for workstations, servers and cloud accounts, with an immutable offsite copy and monitoring on every job.
03
Test
We restore files and systems on a schedule, record how long it took and fix anything that didn’t come back clean.
04
Recover
When something goes wrong, we restore it. When something big goes wrong, we follow the written plan with you.
06 · Which plan includes this?
Workstation backup comes with Endpoint Pro and 360
Endpoint Pro and Endpoint 360 include workstation backup and rapid restore. Server, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace backup are sized to your data and added to any plan.
What you get
Endpoint Starter
Endpoint Pro
Endpoint 360
Monitoring, patching and EDR on every device
✓ Included
✓ Included
✓ Included
Help desk and onsite support
✓ Included
✓ Included
✓ Included
Workstation backup and rapid restore
—
✓ Included
✓ Included
BYOD and hybrid-work policy enforcement
—
✓ Included
✓ Included
24/7 SOC monitoring and MDR
—
—
✓ Included
Compliance support and reporting
—
—
✓ Included
Server and file share backup
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace backup
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Disaster recovery planning and testing
Add-on
Add-on
Add-on
Backup storage and retention are quoted to your data. Your written proposal lists exactly what’s covered.
Compare the three plans →Hurricane season, audit or insurance renewal coming up?
We’ll review what’s backed up, where the copies live and when you last restored anything, then send you a plain-English summary.
07 · Questions owners ask us
Backup and disaster recovery FAQ
What is backup and disaster recovery (BDR)?
BDR combines regular backups of your data with a tested plan to restore systems and keep the business running after an outage, cyberattack or disaster. Backup is the copy; disaster recovery is how fast and from where you get back to work.
What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?
Keep at least three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, with one copy offsite. We add an immutable copy that can’t be changed or deleted, which protects backups from ransomware.
Doesn’t Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace already back up my data?
They keep their services running and offer limited version history and recycle bins. They aren’t designed to recover data you deleted months ago, data an attacker tampered with or a mailbox removed with a departing employee. A separate backup you control covers those cases.
How often should a small business back up?
At least daily for most systems, and more often, often hourly, for systems that change all day, like file servers and line-of-business databases. The right frequency comes from your RPO: how much work you could afford to redo.
What is an immutable backup?
A backup stored so it can’t be modified or deleted for a set period, sometimes called WORM (write once, read many). Even if an attacker gets admin access, they can’t encrypt or erase it.
How do you know the backups actually work?
We test restores on a schedule, record the results and fix failures. We also monitor every backup job, so a failure becomes a ticket for our team the same day rather than a surprise during a real emergency.
How long does it take to recover?
It depends on what failed. A single file usually comes back quickly. A full server depends on data size, hardware and internet speed. We measure restore times during testing so you have a realistic number before you need it.
What happens to our data during a hurricane?
With our setup, at least one backup copy is stored outside Southwest Florida, so a local storm or flood doesn’t take your only copy with it. Cloud-based email, files and phones also let staff keep working from wherever they evacuate to, as long as they have power and internet.
Can backups help with cyber insurance and compliance?
Yes. Insurers commonly ask about offline or immutable backups and tested restores, and HIPAA, the FTC Safeguards Rule and SEC rules all expect data to be recoverable. We provide restore test records you can use as evidence.
Do we need to replace our existing backup?
Not necessarily. We start by testing what you have. If it meets your recovery targets and we can monitor it, we may keep it. If it doesn’t, we’ll show you why and what we’d change.
By industry
Medical practices, advisers and law firms carry retention rules on top of the usual risks. Every business needs to get its data back.
Near you
We’re based in Naples. Managed backup pages by city:
Backup review
Find out what would actually come back
Tell us what you back up today, even if the answer is “I’m not sure.” We’ll review it and tell you what would survive a deleted folder, a dead server, ransomware or a storm.
A list of what’s backed up and what isn’t
Where your copies live and whether any are immutable
Realistic recovery times, in plain English
NerdSquad Managed IT Services · Naples, FL · 239-465-0079
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