How often are backups performed?

Backup frequency can be tailored to your business needs. Benchmark provides automated backups that can run as often as required, from daily or hourly to even more frequent intervals, to help minimize data loss.

What’s the difference between backup and disaster recovery?

Data backup creates secure copies of your information, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring your data and IT systems after events like cyberattacks, hardware failures, or natural disasters.

How secure are the backups?

Benchmark uses advanced encryption and secure data centers to protect your data during both transmission and storage so only authorized users can access your backups.

How do you protect against ransomware?

We use advanced threat-detection algorithms and layered security measures to protect your data from ransomware attacks, and secure backup solutions allow restoration to a pre-attack point.

What happens if a backup fails?

We continuously monitor backup processes and receive alerts for failures or issues, then quickly troubleshoot and resolve them to keep your data protected and recoverable.

Backup & Disaster Recovery

Data Backup & Disaster Recovery for NC Businesses

60% of businesses that lose critical data shut down within six months. Benchmark Network Solutions designs and manages backup systems that survive ransomware, hardware failure, and natural disaster — with tested recovery times that meet your business requirements.

Review My Backup Strategy (919) 678-8595

The Risk of Inadequate Backup

Most Small Business Backups Won't Survive Ransomware

Consumer backup tools and mapped network drives offer false security. Here's what actually happens when NC businesses face a real data loss event.

Ransomware Encrypts Backups Too

Ransomware targeting NC businesses specifically searches for mapped drives and cloud sync folders (OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive) before encrypting. If your backup is mounted or syncing, it gets encrypted alongside your production data.

Immutable backup with no writable credentials in scope

Recovery Takes Days, Not Hours

Restoring 1 TB of data from a cold cloud backup over a typical business internet connection takes 12–24 hours. Without a local backup appliance, you sit idle while data trickles down from the cloud — and the clock is running on your recovery.

Local appliance enables VM boot in under 60 minutes

Backups Never Tested = No Guarantee

A backup that has never been restored is not a backup — it's an assumption. Backup jobs silently fail. Disk corruption goes unnoticed. When you need the restore, you discover the backup job has been failing for months.

Automated verification + quarterly restore tests with written reports

Recovery Objectives

We Design Backup Plans Around Your RTO and RPO

Before we recommend any backup solution, we ask two questions: how long can you be down, and how much data can you afford to lose?

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

RTO is the maximum time your business can tolerate being offline after a disaster. A law firm might accept 4 hours; a medical practice might require 1 hour. We design recovery infrastructure — local appliance, failover cloud, or hybrid — to meet your specific RTO at the lowest possible cost.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

RPO is how much data you can afford to lose — the gap between the last good backup and the point of failure. An hourly-snapshot backup means you lose at most 1 hour of work. We size backup frequency to your RPO: 15-minute snapshots for critical databases, hourly for file servers, daily for workstations.

Disaster Recovery Plan

A written DR plan documents your RTO/RPO targets, recovery procedures, communication protocols, and vendor contacts. We create and maintain this document for you — and test it quarterly so staff know exactly what to do when a real disaster occurs.

Backup & DR Services

Complete Data Protection for NC Businesses

On-Site Backup Appliance (Datto SIRIS)

Datto SIRIS performs image-based backups of all servers every hour. Each recovery point is automatically screenshot-verified for bootability. Ransomware cannot touch these backups — no writable network share, no mapped drive.

Cloud Replication & Offsite Copy

Every backup replicates to Datto's geo-redundant cloud in real time. If your office is destroyed, we spin up servers in the cloud within hours. Offsite copy satisfies the 3-2-1 backup rule required by most cyber liability insurance policies.

Workstation & Endpoint Backup

Veeam Agent or Datto Endpoint backs up employee laptops and desktops — including remote workers — hourly. Restores from the management console in minutes. Covers local drive failure, theft, and ransomware on endpoints.

Microsoft 365 Backup

Microsoft's native retention is not a backup. We deploy Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 to independently back up Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive with 1-year retention and point-in-time restore.

Tested Restores & DR Drills

Monthly automated screenshot verification plus quarterly manual restore tests on randomized systems. Annual full DR simulation restoring production servers to an isolated environment. Written test report delivered after each drill.

Ransomware Recovery

Defined ransomware response runbook: isolate affected systems, identify the infection timeline, restore from last clean snapshot, and scan-clean before reconnecting. We manage the entire process — including working with your cyber liability insurer.

What is the difference between RTO and RPO?

RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is how long your business can tolerate being down after a disaster — for example, 4 hours. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is how much data you can afford to lose — for example, the last 1 hour of work. Benchmark Network Solutions designs backup plans to meet the specific RTO and RPO your business requires.

How often should my business back up data?

Most Triangle-area SMBs require hourly or sub-hourly backup intervals for critical servers and databases, and daily backups for workstations. File servers holding actively modified documents should snapshot every 15 to 60 minutes. Older backup practices of nightly-only backups leave businesses exposed to losing an entire day's work in a ransomware attack.

Does cloud backup protect against ransomware?

Only if the backup is immutable and air-gapped. Ransomware that gains access to a Windows account with write permissions to a mapped network drive or cloud sync folder will encrypt backups too. Benchmark uses Datto SIRIS (immutable backup appliance) with cloud-replication — ransomware cannot modify or delete these backups even with admin credentials.

How do you test backups to confirm they actually work?

We run automated screenshot verification after every backup (Datto takes a bootable screenshot of each VM recovery point) and perform monthly manual restore tests on a randomized subset of protected systems. Quarterly, we conduct a full disaster recovery test restoring a production server to an isolated environment. You receive a written test report after each quarterly test.

How fast can you restore after a ransomware attack?

For clients with Datto SIRIS, we can perform a bare-metal restore or spin up a virtual machine directly from the backup appliance within 15 to 60 minutes of confirming the scope of the attack. Full production restoration from cloud depends on server count and data volume but typically completes within 4 to 8 hours for a 10–20 server environment.

Test Your Backup Today

Free Backup Assessment for Durham-Area Businesses

We review your current backup configuration, test a sample restore, and tell you honestly whether your data is actually recoverable. No cost. No obligation.

Request Free Assessment (919) 678-8595