Backup Roulette
Backups run every night, but nobody has ever restored from one
What is actually going on
Almost every business we look at has backups. Far fewer have ever restored from them. Until a restore has been done and timed, a backup is an assumption, and the day you find out whether it was a safe one is the worst possible day to learn.
Untested is unknown
Backup software reports success on jobs that would not actually restore. Corrupted archives, missed volumes and quietly failing agents all report green until someone tries to use them.
Retention is not backup
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace keep deleted items for a while. That is retention, not backup. It will not save you from a deletion discovered months later, a compromised account, or a departing employee clearing a mailbox.
Partial coverage
Backups tend to cover the thing that mattered when they were set up. New servers, new laptops and new cloud services get added to the business but never added to the backup.
Recovery without a plan
Even with good backups, nobody has agreed what gets restored first, who decides, or how long the business can be down. The plan gets invented under pressure while everyone waits.
What it costs
The cost only ever arrives all at once. Ransomware, a failed drive or a mistaken deletion turns an abstract gap into days of downtime, and the answer to how long you will be down is whatever the restore happens to take.
What we would do about it
What changes
Coverage matches reality across servers, endpoints and cloud workspaces. Restores have been performed and timed rather than assumed, and there is a written plan naming what comes back first and how long it takes.
Whether it pays
The return is the difference between a bad day and a closed business. It is insurance, and like insurance the value is only visible on the day you need it.