Beyond the Backup
Backup tapes and external hard drives don't cut it anymore. Most businesses can't wait days or weeks to recover systems after a ransomware attack or hardware failure -- if the backups work at all. Entire cities destroyed by fire and flood are also a good reminder that businesses can lose everything by storing backup tapes and external hard drives in local facilities or a business owner's home.
In general, we recommend systems that meet the following criteria:
- Automatic real-time backup
- Data automatically stored in a place with different natural threats (e.g. Calgary and Toronto)
- Keep data from crossing international borders
- Automatic detection and response to ransomware & cryptomalware
- Automatic version control with previous hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly backup rotation
- Version and date-based backups for Office 365 and Google gSuite systems
- Instant local and remote failover for business-critical systems
- Immediate access to backed up data
- Encryption of backups in transit and at rest
- Storage strategy based on business impact assessment (BIA)
- Regular testing of recovery and failover processes
- Annual third-party assurance over data centres, such as the Service Organization Control 1 (SOC1) reporting standards set forth in the Canadian Standard of Assurance Engagements (CSAE 3416).
We provide custom solutions and backup appliances that automatically replicate your systems to appliances on your site as well as secure SOC1-certified facilities in Toronto and Calgary.
We also provide always-on cellular Internet backup routers and self-healing wireless mesh access points.
Options
Local Backup Appliance
Local appliances provide fast real-time secure replication, imemediate recovery, and failover for your systems without worrying about Internet speeds or outages. We provide white-glove installation of an appliance that copies your local backups to SOC1-certified data centres in Toronto (for Calgary clients) or Calgary (for Toronto clients). Depending on your requirements, we may provide the appliance free of charge.
Remote Backup
Backups should always be stored in a location that is not subject to the same threats as the primary location. For example, if a business in Fort McMurray stores its tapes at an IT Manager's office, the tapes could be melted in the same fire that burned down the office. Instantly replicating systems in Calgary to Toronto ensure that natural disasters that affect one location won't touch the other. Secure transfer over the Internet is faster, more reliable, and more secure than a tape courier or backup truck.
Automatic Failover
How long can your business tolerate an outage of its most critical systems? How much data can you afford to lose? Hourly backups can accomodate a very tight Recovery Point Objective (RPO). Automatic failovers to a local appliane support a near instant Recoery Time Objective (RTO) with little to no performance degredation. If your main systems fail and local appliance is destroyed, your systems can fail over to our remote backups within seconds. If ransomware infects your systems, our backups will detect mass encryptions, recover files, and/or failover to keep your business running smoothly. In virtually any scenario, you can be back up and running before your competitors even pick up the phone to order their backup tapes to be delivered!
Google, Office365, SalesForce
Microsoft, Google, and SalesForce provide excellent uptime and reliability. However, files get deleted, ransomware corrupts mounted OneDrive files, Google gSuite Backup and Sync folders, and Google Drive file streams. In the worst case, compliance-related files or financial records can be lost forever without adequate backups -- even when using fairly reliable cloud providers. Backupify addresses these and other risks by monitoring change, proactively responding to signs of ransomware, and keeping as many hourly, daily, weekly, and/or monthly backups as you need. This means that if you don't realize that you've deleted something until after it's automatically purged from your cloud storage system -- or worse yet, until after your auditor or court requests a file that was accidentally deleted.
Bitbucket and Costom Solutions
We can configure Bitbucket and other repositories to automatically backup to Canadian data centres. We also develop custom backup and replication systems using multiple AWS or Azure accounts to properly isolate backups.
Always-on Cellular Internet Service Backup
The Datto Networking Appliance provides:
- Fully integrated 4G LTE Internet failover with no additional contract or overage charges
- Integrated firewall with intrusion detection and prevention
- High performance edge router with 1.7Gbps of throughput (firewall only, 661Mbpz with IPS, 730Mbpx Internet mix)
- Client and site-to-site VPN
- NAT, stateful packet inspection, port forwarding, DMZ
- Protocol analysis, port scanning, signature-based rules, web filtering, whitelisting, ad blocking
- QoS traffic shaping
- 6 built-in 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 2 dedicated WAN ports, 4 configurable VLAN ports
- 3x3 MIMI AC Type 2.4/5GHz WiFi
- Cloud management
Self-Healing Wireless Mesh
For a fraction of the price of competing Meraki devices, combine our networking access points and they'll auto-optimize and self-tune for optimal performance. Options from 300+867Mbps to 2x2,300Mbps supporting 802.11a/g/n/ac Wave 2.
In larger space -- even houses, they provide a self-forming, self-healing mesh that allows seamless roaming between devices with 2 gigabit ports on each device.
CE Marked for Indoor/Outdoor use, IP55 (water projected by a nozzle from any direction without harmfull effect) from -20°C to +50°C.
What our clients say about ThreeShield
CTO, Tilia Inc. (Financial Technology and Online Payments)
" ThreeShield has employed a dynamic, risk-based approach to information security that is specific to our business needs but also provides comfort to our external stakeholders. I recommend their services. "
IT Architect, Financial Technology and Online Retail
" Collaborating with ThreeShield to ensure data security was an exciting and educational experience. As we exploded in growth, it was clear that we needed to rapidly mature on all fronts, and ThreeShield was integral to building our confidence with information, software, and infrastructure security. "
IT Security Director, Linden Lab (Virtual Reality)
" ThreeShield helped us focus our efforts, enhancing our security posture and verifying PCI compliance.
All of this was achieved with minimal disruption to the engineering organization as a whole.
The approach was smart. In a short time, we accomplished what much larger companies still struggle to achieve. "
Senior Director of Systems and Build Engineering
" ThreeShield very much values active and respectful collaboration, and went out of their way to get feedback on policies to make sure proposals balanced business needs while not making employees feel like they were dealing with unreasonable overhead. By doing so ThreeShield really helped change the culture around security mindfulness is positive ways. "
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