58 / 58Backup and Disaster Recovery

Backup and disaster recovery in Canada, tested not promised

Backup and disaster recovery in Canada built on immutable copies and restores we test on a schedule.

Talk to an architectSee what's covered
  • CCIE Security-led team
  • Protecting Canadian data since 2021
  • Canadian data residency available
THE WORK

Disaster recovery services, three pillars, one operator.

One Canadian team owns the copies, the recovery plan, and the proof. That means immutable backup, disaster recovery as a service, and the restore drills that show the plan holds.

  1. 1

    Backup and immutable copies

    Veeam backup written to storage a ransomware operator can't delete, held on the 3-2-1-1-0 rule: three copies, two media, one offsite, one immutable, zero errors on the verified restore.

  2. 2

    Disaster recovery as a service

    DRaaS with failover to Canadian infrastructure, sized to the recovery time objective and recovery point objective you agree with us per system, not to a target we picked on your behalf.

  3. 3

    Tested restores

    Canadian CCIE Security engineers run live restore drills on a contracted schedule and hand you the written result, including what missed and what we changed because of it.

THE PROOF

Built to last. Evidence over promises.

Good data backup services across Canada mean a restore somebody has actually run, not a green tick nobody's tested.

IN PRODUCTION

Backups that survive the attacker, in Canada.

Every ransomware job we've been called into had backups. What they didn't have was a copy the attacker couldn't reach, because the backup server sat on the same domain with the same admin credentials. Immutability isn't a feature you tick. It's the difference between a bad week and a closed business.

SMEnode · Engineering principle
  • CCIE Data Center
  • CCIE Security
  • CCDE Design
  • Canadian data residency
THE DEEP DIVE

Backup and disaster recovery in Canada, made real.

I run this practice, so this is written by the engineer who'll be on the call at 3am, not a product page.

Backup and disaster recovery are two different jobs.

Backup is the copy of your data. Disaster recovery is the plan and the infrastructure that gets the business running again, including the applications, the network, and the people who need to log in. Backup answers whether you can get the file back. Disaster recovery answers how long until you're trading again. Cloud backup services do the first job well and the second one not at all, because a copy still needs somewhere to land. You need both, and the second is where most Canadian firms find out their plan was a document nobody had rehearsed.

We start from your targets, then build backwards.

Here's how we work. We start from the recovery time objective and the recovery point objective, because those two decide everything else. Recovery time objective is how long you can be down. Recovery point objective is how much data you can afford to lose. Set them per system, not per company, since your finance database and your file share don't deserve the same money. Then we design backwards from what you agreed, and we test restores on a schedule rather than assuming a job that reported success produced a usable copy.

What a Canadian outage costs, and why immutability decides it.

Canadian organisations paid an average of $7.11M per data breach in 2026, a record high, and the average breach took 205 days to detect and contain (source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, via IBM Canada, 2026-07-29). Ransomware recovery is the scenario immutable backup exists for. An attacker who reaches your backups turns a recoverable incident into an existential one, which is why the copy belongs on storage nobody can alter or delete inside its retention period, including an administrator holding stolen credentials.

Poste d'exploitation
THE METHOD

How a backup and disaster recovery project runs.

We sequence the work so the plan is proven before you need it. Week one is a business conversation, not a storage sizing exercise. We work out which systems the company genuinely can't trade without, what an hour of downtime costs each one, and what your current setup would really do in a crisis. From there we design to the targets you agreed and prove it. Every SMEnode engagement runs this way, across Canada.

  1. Étape 01

    Classify and set targets

    We list every workload and agree a recovery time objective and a recovery point objective for each with the people who own the process, not just IT. Out of it comes a tiered protection plan and an honest gap report against what you run today. Most of the value is in this step.

  2. Étape 02

    Build the copies

    We deploy backup with immutable storage and offsite copies, following 3-2-1-1-0: three copies, two media, one offsite, one immutable, zero errors on the verified restore.

  3. Étape 03

    Build the recovery path

    Cloud backup services and DRaaS failover get stood up and documented, with runbooks naming who does what and in which order. A recovery plan that lives in one person's head isn't a plan.

  4. Étape 04

    Test and prove

    We run live restore drills on the agreed cadence, measure the real recovery against the target you set, and give you a written result. When a drill misses, we fix the design rather than quietly adjusting the target.

QUESTIONS

Backup and disaster recovery questions, answered straight.

These are the questions owners and IT managers actually ask us, usually after a near miss. Answers are from the engineer who runs the recoveries.

Backup is a copy of your data. Disaster recovery is the plan, infrastructure, and process that gets the whole business operating again: applications, network, access, and the order things come back in. Backup answers whether you can retrieve a file. Disaster recovery answers how long until staff are working. Backups alone won't restore a business, and most firms find that out on the worst possible day.

RTO is recovery time objective, the longest a system can be down. RPO is recovery point objective, the most data you can afford to lose, measured backwards from the incident. Set both per system with the people who own the process, because different workloads justify different spend and a single company-wide target usually fits nothing.

An immutable backup can't be altered or deleted for a set retention period, including by an administrator using stolen credentials. You need it. Ransomware operators go for backup systems first, because encrypting production only forces a payment when recovery is impossible. Canadian breach costs reached a record high in 2026 (source: IBM Canada, 2026-07-29).

Cloud backup services store copies offsite. Disaster recovery as a service goes further and keeps standby infrastructure ready, so your workloads can fail over and run somewhere else. With backup alone you still need somewhere to restore to, and procuring that during an outage costs days. DRaaS is what you buy when your recovery window is hours rather than a week.

Canadian data residency is available, and we name the region for every workload in writing before anything moves. That matters under PIPEDA, where your organisation stays accountable for personal information even when a provider holds it, and the contract has to give comparable protection (source: Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada). We run Veeam backup to Canadian infrastructure by default.

Usually not. Most estates we inherit fail on immutability, offsite copies, and untested restores, not on the badge on the software. We'd rather fix the design than sell you a migration. Veeam is what we reach for when the choice is ours, and we'll say plainly when what you own can't hold a copy an attacker cannot reach.
POURSUIVEZ

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