CLOUD & DATA · BACKUP & DISASTER RECOVERY · TEXAS

Backup & Disaster Recovery in Texas

A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a control. Sentinel-Pros builds copies that ransomware cannot delete, tests restores on a schedule, and writes down how long recovery takes and how much data you would lose, so those numbers are a decision rather than a discovery.

The Problem

Almost every company we meet believes it has backups. What it usually has is a job that ran successfully, a console nobody opens, and a set of credentials that would let an intruder delete every copy in about four minutes. Nobody has restored a server end to end in years, so the real recovery time is unknown, and the answer to how much work would be lost is whatever the last successful job happened to capture. Cloud data is often assumed to be safe simply because it is in the cloud, which leaves mailboxes, files, and line-of-business records with no independent copy at all. The gap surfaces at the worst possible time: after a ransomware event, a bad update, a departing employee's cleanup, or a storm that takes a building offline for a week.

The Solution

We start from the business rather than the software, asking how long each system can be down and how much data the company can afford to lose. Those two answers drive the design instead of the other way round. Copies are made immutable so they cannot be encrypted or deleted by an attacker with your administrator password, held in more than one place, and separated from the credentials that run production. Then we test: full restores, file-level restores, and at least one exercise where a real system is brought back and looked at by someone who knows what right looks like. Backup work is remote, so we operate it for companies across Texas; Houston metro clients also have on-site support, and elsewhere any equipment work is scheduled from Houston. Pricing is a fixed monthly retainer scoped on a discovery call.

WHAT'S INCLUDED

Core Responsibilities

Copies That Survive An Attack

Immutable storage so backups cannot be altered or deleted inside the retention window
Backup credentials separated from production administrative accounts
Copies held in more than one location, including offsite from the primary building

Coverage That Includes The Cloud

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace mail, files, and sites backed up independently
Line-of-business databases and application servers captured in a restorable state
Endpoints and remote laptops covered for the staff who never touch a file server

Proof Rather Than Assumption

Scheduled test restores with results recorded and shared with leadership
Recovery time and recovery point objectives written down per system
A documented runbook so recovery does not depend on one person being reachable
HOW IT WORKS

Engagement Process

01

Decide What Downtime Costs

We work through each system with the people who depend on it: what happens at hour one, hour eight, and day three without it. That conversation sets the recovery targets, and it usually reveals that two or three systems matter far more than the rest.

02

Design Around The Targets

Retention, frequency, storage location, and immutability are chosen to meet the targets you set rather than to match a vendor's default. Systems that must return within hours get a different design and a different cost than ones that can wait a day.

03

Implement And Isolate

We deploy the jobs, verify that what is being captured is genuinely restorable, and cut the link between backup control and everyday administrative accounts. An attacker who compromises a domain administrator should not inherit the ability to erase your recovery path.

04

Test, Report, Repeat

Restores are exercised on a schedule and the results go into a short report leadership can read. When a test fails, and some will, the fix happens on a normal Tuesday instead of during an incident with customers waiting.

SPECIALIZED SERVICES

Where We Deliver This

FAQ

Common Questions

Microsoft keeps our email. Why would we back up Microsoft 365?

Microsoft keeps the service running and gives you limited retention windows, which is not the same as keeping your data recoverable after a mistake or an attack. Deleted items age out, a compromised account can purge a mailbox, and a departing employee can clear a site. An independent copy under your control covers the gap between what the platform guarantees and what your business needs.

What does immutable actually mean here?

It means that once a copy is written, it cannot be modified or deleted until its retention period expires, even by someone holding full administrative credentials. That is the specific control that defeats modern ransomware, because attackers now target the backup system first. Without it, a single compromised account can remove your only way back.

How fast could we be running again after a ransomware event?

It depends on how much data there is, what has to come back first, and whether the environment can be rebuilt clean. We will not quote a number before designing it, but we will put the honest number in writing once the design exists, and we will test against it. The point of the exercise is that you know the answer before the day you need it.

We are on the coast. Does hurricane season change the design?

It changes where copies live and how recovery is sequenced. If a building may be inaccessible or without power for a week, restoring to the same room is not a plan, so we design for recovery into a cloud environment staff can reach from anywhere. Companies inland face the same question from tornado, fire, and flood events, just with different odds.

Can you cover a company with sites spread across the state?

Yes. Backup design and operation are remote work, and multi-site companies are the common case in Texas, where a head office and remote yards, clinics, or branches all hold data that matters. Sentinel-Pros works from Houston with no other offices, so any hands-on work at a distant site is scheduled and planned rather than same-day.

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Across Texas

Recovery planning in Texas has to account for the fact that the threats are not only digital. Gulf Coast businesses from Corpus Christi to Beaumont plan around a hurricane season that can make a building unreachable for a week regardless of whether the servers survived. Inland, the February freeze taught a lot of owners that a data closet depends on a power grid and a water line. Add ordinary regional risk: grass fires in the Panhandle, flash flooding in the Hill Country, and tornado exposure across North Texas. The business consequences vary by industry. A medical practice or home health agency that cannot reach patient records has both a clinical and a regulatory problem, and its clearinghouse deadlines do not pause. An oilfield services company loses ticketing and billing while crews keep working, so revenue quietly disappears into paper. A defense or aerospace supplier answers to a prime contractor whose flow-down terms treat recovery capability as a contractual obligation. Customs brokers and freight forwarders at the border stop clearing loads within minutes of an outage, and the trucks queue up. Manufacturers lose scheduling and quality records that regulators and customers expect them to hold. Ranch and grain operations hit seasonal windows that do not wait for an IT project. In each case the recovery target is set by the business calendar, not by the software.