Data Backup & Recovery

Every office will lose data at some point. The question is not if — it is when, and whether you can get it back in time. A server drive fails, a ransomware attack encrypts your files, an employee deletes a critical folder, a power surge corrupts a database. Without a tested, current backup, these events become disasters. With one, they become a two-hour inconvenience.

Araneae Networks designs and manages backup solutions for UAE offices from small businesses to enterprise environments. We follow the 3-2-1 rule as a minimum: three copies of your data, on two different storage types, with one off-site. In practice that means a local NAS for fast recovery, a second on-site copy for redundancy, and an encrypted cloud backup for off-site protection — automatic, scheduled and monitored.

Local backups are only half the solution. We size and install a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device on your network, configure automated nightly backups of servers, workstations and shared drives, and set up retention policies that keep daily snapshots for 30 days, weekly snapshots for 3 months, and monthly archives for 12 months. Recovery from a NAS is fast — files restored in minutes, full server restored in hours, not days.

Cloud backup handles the off-site requirement without the cost of a second physical location. We connect your NAS or servers to a cloud backup service (Microsoft Azure, AWS S3 or a UAE-hosted provider depending on your data residency requirements), encrypt everything client-side before it leaves your network, and verify the cloud copy daily. Your data is stored in an encrypted state that only your keys can unlock.

Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are not backups. Microsoft's own documentation confirms that tenant-level data can be permanently deleted — intentionally or accidentally — and that their built-in retention has strict limits. We deploy SaaS-specific backup tools that capture email, Teams conversations, SharePoint libraries and OneDrive files into a separate backup repository, protecting you from accidental deletion, departing employees and ransomware that targets cloud accounts.

A backup that has never been tested is not a backup — it is a hope. Our standard setup includes a quarterly restore test: we pull a sample of files and, where possible, test a full server restore to verify the backup chain is intact. You receive a short report confirming the test result. When your AMC contract includes backup management, restore tests are performed on every scheduled preventive maintenance visit.