Managed Backup & Disaster Recovery Services

Backup and disaster recovery services

Ransomware, deletion, hardware failure: your data must be recoverable in minutes. Microsoft 365 backup, Azure snapshots, immutable storage, and failover.

What is managed backup and disaster recovery?

Managed backup and disaster recovery is a service in which a provider takes independent copies of a company's Microsoft 365 and Azure data, stores them where nobody can alter them, and restores them on demand. It is for small businesses that would lose days of work to ransomware, deletion or hardware failure. IDE Solutions keeps snapshots in write-once, read-many storage no compromised admin account can delete, holds the data in certified German and EU data centres, and tests recovery regularly.

Business Continuity That Holds Up

Disaster Recovery Planning

We design disaster recovery plans tailored to your business, defining RTOs and RPOs for every critical system. Azure Site Recovery handles automated failover to a secondary region, bringing servers, databases, and applications back online in minutes, not days. We run regular DR drills so failover is verified before you need it.

Insider Threat Protection

Protect your critical business data from disgruntled or negligent employees. Even if someone maliciously deletes entire SharePoint libraries, purges mailboxes, or wipes OneDrive files before their departure, our immutable backup snapshots stored in write-once, read-many (WORM) storage allow us to rewind the clock and restore everything to any point in time. These backups cannot be modified, encrypted, or deleted by anyone - including compromised admin accounts - making them your ultimate safety net against insider threats and ransomware.

Microsoft 365 Backup

Microsoft keeps their infrastructure online, but they don't back up your data. If an employee permanently deletes emails, files, or SharePoint libraries beyond the native retention window, Microsoft Support cannot recover them, a gap we explain in detail in who actually carries the Microsoft 365 backup responsibility. We provide independent backups for Exchange mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams with retention up to 7+ years. Granular restore means you can recover a single email, a single file, or an entire account in minutes.

Data Sovereignty & Location

Know exactly where your backup data lives - this matters for GDPR compliance. We configure all backup storage in compliant, certified data centers within Germany and the European Union, ensuring your data never leaves the jurisdiction required by your regulators, clients, or insurance providers. All data is encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+), with access controlled by strict role-based permissions and detailed audit logging for every recovery operation.

Backup & Recovery Services We Provide

How Small Businesses Protect Their Data

Real recovery stories from businesses that were prepared for the worst.

Ransomware Recovery

A logistics company with 40 employees was hit by ransomware on a Friday evening that encrypted all their Windows file shares, SQL databases, and mapped network drives. The attackers demanded €80,000 in Bitcoin. Because we had configured immutable backup snapshots stored in write-once Azure storage, we restored their entire file server and databases to a clean state from backups taken just 4 hours before the attack. The company was fully operational by Saturday morning - no ransom paid, no data lost, no customer impact.

Result: Full recovery in 4 hours, zero ransom paid, zero data loss

Accidental Deletion Recovery

An employee at a design agency accidentally permanently deleted a critical SharePoint document library containing 3 years of client project files - over 15,000 documents including design assets, contracts, and deliverables. Microsoft's native retention had already expired for most items, and Microsoft Support confirmed the data was unrecoverable from their side. Our dedicated Microsoft 365 backup solution restored the entire library with complete version history and folder structure intact in under 30 minutes.

Result: SharePoint library with 15,000+ files restored in 30 minutes

Email Compliance Backup

A financial advisory firm was required by German regulatory authorities to retain all client email communications for a minimum of 7 years. Microsoft 365's native retention capabilities alone could not meet the full regulatory requirements for independent, tamper-proof archival. We configured automated daily M365 backups for all Exchange mailboxes with GDPR-compliant storage in certified German data centers, 7-year immutable retention, and granular search and restore capabilities for regulatory inquiries.

Result: 7-year compliant email archive active, regulatory requirements met

Server Room Flood

A water pipe burst overnight in a client's basement server room, destroying their on-premise file server, domain controller, and application server. The hardware was a total loss. Because we had previously configured Azure Site Recovery with automated replication of their critical VMs to an Azure data center, we initiated failover within minutes of receiving the alert. All systems - file shares, Active Directory, and their ERP application - were running from Azure before the first employees arrived Monday morning.

Result: All systems online in 15 minutes after catastrophic hardware loss

Departing Employee Data

A senior sales manager at a consulting firm resigned unexpectedly and their line manager urgently needed access to years of client correspondence, proposal documents, and CRM notes stored in the employee's Exchange mailbox and OneDrive. The employee had already been offboarded and their Microsoft 365 account deleted before the request came in. We restored the complete mailbox (4 years of email) and full OneDrive contents from our independent backup within one hour, preserving critical client relationships.

Result: Complete mailbox and OneDrive restored within 1 hour

Database Corruption Fix

A mid-sized e-commerce company ran a database migration script that contained a critical bug, corrupting their product catalog and customer order history in their Azure SQL database. Thousands of orders from the previous week were affected, and the application was down. Our automated SQL database backups with transaction log shipping allowed us to perform a precise point-in-time restore to exactly 5 minutes before the faulty script executed - recovering the complete database without losing a single customer order or transaction record.

Result: Zero data loss from database corruption, exact point-in-time recovery

Typical Backup Outcomes

Illustrative scenarios based on typical engagements, not quotations from named clients.

Example scenario: Logistics Firm (40 users). Ransomware hits a logistics firm with 40 users on a Friday night. By the next morning we restore the whole environment, file servers, databases and email, from immutable backups, with no ransom paid and no files lost. A common finding in such cases: the previous provider never tested the backups, and they had been failing unnoticed for months. We therefore run monthly recovery verification tests, so it is known that the backups work when they are needed.

Example scenario: Design Agency (18 users). A design agency with 18 users assumes, like many businesses, that Microsoft backs up its Microsoft 365 data. Then an employee permanently deletes critical SharePoint libraries, and Microsoft Support confirms that the data cannot be recovered on their side. We restore everything from an independent M365 backup within a few hours. The standard setup is an automated daily backup of all mailboxes, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams data with a retention period of one year.

Example scenario: FinTech Startup (35 users). A flooded server room destroys all on-premise hardware at a fintech startup with 35 users. With the disaster recovery plan we set up, the systems fail over to Azure automatically within minutes. Operations and customer service keep working without interruption, and customers do not notice the incident. Business continuity at this level is no longer limited to large enterprises.

Example scenario: Healthcare Company (45 users). A healthcare company with 45 users must show its compliance auditors that data is not only backed up but can be restored. We run recovery tests every month and document the results, including verified RTOs and RPOs for every critical system. The auditors receive exactly the evidence they ask for. The difference lies between having backups and proving recoverability, and many companies only do the former.

Why You Need Backup Experts

A backup is only worth something if it restores cleanly, and most businesses never test theirs until a disaster forces the issue. Corrupted files, expired retention windows, and misconfigured jobs are common. We monitor every backup job, run automated integrity checks, and perform regular recovery tests. When you need your data, it's there.

If you want the reasoning behind our design choices, read why we build every backup around the 3-2-1-1-0 rule, and why backup vs disaster recovery are two different purchases rather than one.

The worst time to test a backup is during a restore. Get in touch and we will review what your current setup would actually bring back.

Backup & Disaster Recovery: Frequently Asked Questions

The three questions every business should ask before the incident, not after.

Doesn't Microsoft already back up our Microsoft 365 data?

Microsoft keeps its infrastructure online; it does not back up your data. Once an email, file or SharePoint library is deleted beyond the native retention window, Microsoft Support cannot bring it back. That gap between infrastructure uptime and data recoverability is exactly what a dedicated Microsoft 365 backup closes.

How fast can we recover after ransomware or a major deletion?

In minutes rather than days: immutable snapshots restore mailboxes, files and SharePoint libraries to any point in time, and Azure Site Recovery fails whole servers over to a secondary region automatically. Recovery objectives are defined per system in your DR plan, and we run regular drills so the failover is proven before it is ever needed.

Can an attacker with admin rights delete our backups?

No. Backup snapshots are stored in write-once, read-many (WORM) immutable storage that cannot be modified, encrypted or deleted by anyone — including a compromised global admin account. That is the property that makes them a real safety net against both ransomware and insider threats, not just accidental deletion.