Nine lines, because a clinic does not hold one kind of data. Reception machines. The server in the supply closet. Guests on a hypervisor. The Microsoft or Google tenant everybody assumes somebody else is covering. The ledger. The directory. And the one question that gets asked only once, on the worst possible day: does any of it actually come back.
Microsoft and Google both keep your data available, and neither of them is taking a backup of it for you. Both say so in their own documentation, in a paragraph nobody reads until the week it becomes urgent. Retention settings decide how long something remains recoverable inside the platform. Once past that, a purged mailbox or a removed site has gone, and the support case will confirm it courteously.
Clinics usually learn this after an account closes and somebody needs the correspondence that was inside it. The tenant lines hold material outside the platform, which turns that request into a job rather than an apology.
Every backup product produces a report saying the job finished. Finishing is a different claim from returning, and the space between those claims is where practices quietly lose weeks. It stays invisible right up until it is not.
Verification takes a line of its own because it is genuinely separate work. Real restores run to a timetable against covered systems and leave a dated result, pass or fail. A fail raises a consult with our engineers instead of adding a red row to a report nobody reads. It is the dullest item on this board and the one we would keep if only one were allowed.
Rates come live from billing. Anything tagged waits on the chart while you carry on reading.
Repeated versions of live documents on a Windows machine, held somewhere other than the machine. This is what answers the Tuesday afternoon question about a letter somebody saved over at eleven.
| Fitted to | Windows workstations in daily clinical or administrative use |
|---|---|
| Watches | The folders you nominate, taken again and again through the day |
| Kept for | A version history deep enough to walk backwards through |
| Escalates to | Our desk when a run fails or a machine stops reporting in |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, looking at failures rather than at successes |
The entire disk of a machine, so a dead drive at reception becomes a rebuild rather than an archaeology project. A single document or the whole lot, both out of one copy.
| Fitted to | Windows workstations, practice-owned and enrolled |
|---|---|
| Watches | Every scheduled run, and whether the copy genuinely finished |
| Kept for | Whatever schedule was agreed for the workstation estate |
| Escalates to | Our desk on any run that failed or never started |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, who chases a failure instead of filing it |
Complete images of a physical server, which for most clinics means the box holding the practice management database. Recovery straight onto bare metal is the entire point, since rebuilding one by hand costs days nobody has spare.
| Fitted to | Physical servers, including the one running practice management |
|---|---|
| Watches | Every run, whether it finished, and how the database came out |
| Kept for | Whatever schedule was agreed for the server estate |
| Escalates to | Our desk on any run that failed or never started |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, on each failure, before the day is out |
Images of virtual servers taken through the hypervisor, billed by guest so the number matches what you already run. A guest comes back where it started, or somewhere else entirely if the day demands it.
| Fitted to | Virtual guests on a supported hypervisor |
|---|---|
| Watches | Every guest run, and whether what it took is consistent |
| Kept for | Whatever schedule was agreed for the virtual estate |
| Escalates to | Our desk on any run that failed or never started |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, long before anybody needs a restore in anger |
Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams content copied to somewhere the tenant does not control. Retention settings inside a Microsoft tenant are not copies, and a mailbox deleted past its window has simply gone.
| Fitted to | Licensed users in a Microsoft 365 tenant |
|---|---|
| Watches | Every cycle across mail, sites, drives and Teams |
| Kept for | The agreed window, held well outside the tenant itself |
| Escalates to | Our desk whenever a cycle stops short |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, checking the tenant really is covered |
Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Contacts copied away from Google, for clinics running on Workspace. Identical gap on that side of the fence: settings that govern availability are not copies.
| Fitted to | Licensed users in a Google Workspace tenant |
|---|---|
| Watches | Every cycle across mail, drives, calendars and contacts |
| Kept for | The agreed window, held well outside the tenant itself |
| Escalates to | Our desk whenever a cycle stops short |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, checking every licensed account is in scope |
The QuickBooks Online company file, copied and billed one file at a time. Delete something inside the ledger, or import something badly, and the platform will not be handing it back.
| Fitted to | A QuickBooks Online company file, one line for each file |
|---|---|
| Watches | Every cycle across lists, transactions and attachments |
| Kept for | The agreed window for the ledger |
| Escalates to | Our desk whenever a cycle stops short |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, with your bookkeeper on anything unclear |
Entra ID configuration copied out: accounts, groups, roles, and the policies deciding who gets to reach what. Rebuilding a directory out of memory after a bad change makes for a long and miserable week.
| Fitted to | One Entra ID tenant, priced by the tenant |
|---|---|
| Watches | Directory objects, and the policy configuration wrapped around them |
| Kept for | A configuration history worth comparing against |
| Escalates to | Our desk whenever a capture stops short |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, any time a change has to be unwound |
Test restores on a schedule, each producing a dated result. Until somebody has genuinely pulled data back, a copy is optimism rather than a control. This is what turns a continuity plan into a document you can hand over.
| Fitted to | Any system already covered by one of the copy lines above |
|---|---|
| Watches | Whether pulling that system back actually works |
| Kept for | A dated result, kept for your continuity file |
| Escalates to | A consult with our engineers on anything that failed |
| Reviewed by | An engineer, on each result, whichever way it went |
Each station has an edge to it, and clinics get caught out by suppliers who pretend otherwise. Below is where this one stops, set down so a practice can work out what else it needs and who else has to supply it.
Heads up: card statements show FORTIFY 24X7 - MediDefense IT is a Fortify 24x7 brand, and your subscription is billed by Fortify 24x7.