A Backup Is Not a Plan
Most Perth businesses have backups. Very few have ever restored one, and almost none can answer the two questions a real incident asks: how much data can we afford to lose (your recovery point) and how long can we afford to be down (your recovery time). Without those numbers agreed in advance, every outage becomes an improvised emergency at $-per-minute the business never priced.
Disaster recovery is the technical half: backups that cover the right things, protected from the attacker who just encrypted everything else, restore-tested on a schedule. Business continuity is the human half: who declares the incident, what staff do while systems are down, which phone numbers matter, where the plan lives when the server holding it is the thing that died.
We build both halves at small-business scale - a plan measured in pages, not binders, written so the person holding it at 7am actually knows what to do next.
What the Engagement Covers
Fixed-scope, quoted before we start.
Recovery objectives
- What actually has to be running for the business to trade - and in what order
- Recovery time and recovery point objectives agreed per system, in writing
- The honest cost conversation: shorter recovery costs more - you choose the trade-off
Backups done properly
- Coverage checked against reality - servers, Microsoft 365, line-of-business data
- Protection against deletion and ransomware, not just hardware failure
- Automated monitoring with failure alerts someone actually receives
Restore testing
- Scheduled test restores - a backup is unproven until something comes back from it
- Timed against your recovery objective so the number is real, not hopeful
- Evidence kept in writing for insurers, clients and tenders
The continuity plan
- A short, followable document: roles, first hour, communications, workarounds
- Stored where an outage cannot take it down with everything else
- Reviewed annually or after any major change
The test most plans fail
Ask one question of your current setup: when did something last come back from backup? Not "are backups running" - when was a file, a mailbox or a whole system actually restored, and how long did it take?
If the answer is "never" or "not sure", you do not have a disaster recovery capability - you have an untested theory. That is also exactly what a cyber insurer will probe after an incident.
Disaster Recovery Questions, Answered
What Perth businesses ask after their first close call.
What is the difference between disaster recovery and business continuity?
Disaster recovery is getting the technology back: restoring systems and data after an incident. Business continuity is keeping the business operating while that happens - who does what, how staff work during the outage, and how customers are told. A good plan covers both, because a restored server three days from now does not answer what the team does this afternoon.
What are RTO and RPO in plain English?
Recovery time objective (RTO) is how long you can afford to be down. Recovery point objective (RPO) is how much recent data you can afford to lose - if backups run nightly, your RPO is up to 24 hours of work. Agreeing these numbers per system, before an incident, is the core of the whole exercise, because shorter targets cost more and the trade-off should be a business decision, not an accident.
How much does disaster recovery planning cost?
The assessment and plan is a fixed-scope engagement quoted up front, with any remediation work (fixing backup coverage, adding protection, setting up testing) quoted separately or done at $180/hr ex GST. Most small-business plans are a matter of days of work, not weeks - the value is in the decisions and the testing, not the paperwork volume.
Does Microsoft 365 need its own backup?
Microsoft protects its infrastructure, not your data from your own risks - accidental deletion past retention windows, malicious insiders, or ransomware that syncs encrypted files. For many businesses the built-in retention is genuinely enough; for others a third-party M365 backup is warranted. We assess which you are rather than defaulting to selling the add-on.
How often should we test restores?
File-level restores quarterly and a bigger test annually is a sensible small-business rhythm, plus a test after any significant change to systems or backup tooling. The point is a schedule that actually happens - a modest test done every quarter beats an ambitious one done never.
Related Services
The pieces that usually sit alongside this work.
Had a close call - or just realised you have never tested a restore?
Book a continuity review. You will leave with your real recovery numbers, the gaps in writing, and a fixed quote to close them.
Support Perth IT Pty Ltd · Perth, Western Australia · $180/hr ex GST, one-hour minimum, then 30-minute increments · No call-out fee in metro Perth.