Business Continuity

Business continuity is your plan for keeping the business trading when your IT and Technology stops working the way it should. Disaster recovery is the technical side of that: getting your systems and data back.

Most businesses have some form of backup. Far fewer know how long a recovery would actually take, who would run it, or whether it has ever been tested. That gap is where the real cost sits.

We build continuity plans around what your business can genuinely tolerate, then we test them so you know where you stand. 

We use industry leading tools like Cove Data Protection and Datto to keep your data safe and recoverable. And we don’t just set it up and walk away, we test, monitor and improve your plan regularly so it’s ready when you need it most.

What is business continuity and disaster recovery?

The two terms get used interchangeably, but they answer different questions.

Business continuity is about the business. Which functions have to keep running, who does what, how your team works while systems are down, and how you keep customers informed.

Disaster recovery is about the technology. The backups, replicas and documented steps that restore your systems and data.

You need both. A recovery process that restores everything perfectly in four days is no use if your business can't trade for more than four hours.

Two terms come up constantly once you start planning, and they're worth knowing:

• RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is the longest you can be down before it really hurts. It's a business decision, not a technical one.

• RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is how much data you can afford to lose, measured in time. An RPO of one hour means you'd lose at most an hour's work.

Once you've agreed those two numbers, everything else follows. They determine how often backups run, where they're stored and how recovery is designed. Without them, you're guessing.

Why do UK businesses need a continuity plan?

The honest answer is that most don't have one yet.

The government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026 found that only a third of UK businesses (33%) have a business continuity plan covering cyber security. Among small businesses it's 44%, and that figure has gone backwards, down from 53% the year before. Formal incident response plans are rarer still, at 25% of businesses.

Meanwhile, 43% of businesses reported a breach or attack in the last 12 months, which works out at roughly 612,000 organisations.

Disruption doesn't only come from attackers, either. Hardware fails, buildings flood, suppliers go offline and people delete things by accident. The cause varies. The recovery question doesn't.

In practice, it means the businesses that come through disruption well aren't the ones with the biggest security budget. They're the ones who decided in advance what they'd do, wrote it down, and checked it worked.

That's a very achievable thing to sort out, and it doesn't take long.

What's included in business continuity from 1-Fix

A plan built around your recovery targets

We start with what your business actually needs, not with a product. Once we've agreed your RTO and RPO, we design backup and recovery to meet them.

Cloud backup with Cove Data Protection

Fast, secure, cloud-first backup and recovery from N-able, with your data held in the UK and restores that don't depend on anyone being in the office.

Datto backup and continuity

Where you need faster recovery or on-site failover, Datto gives you the option to keep running from a local device while the main restore happens in the background.

Microsoft 365 protection

Microsoft keeps the service running. Your Exchange, SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive data is your responsibility. We back it up properly so a deleted mailbox or a ransomware event doesn't become permanent.

Regular testing and monitoring

Backups fail quietly. We monitor them, run scheduled recovery tests and tell you the results in plain English, including the bits that need attention.

Support when it matters most

If something does go wrong, you're not working out who to call. You've got a team who already knows your systems, your plan and your priorities.

How we build your continuity plan

1. We work out what matters A short business impact assessment with your team. Which systems stop the business if they stop, how long you can cope without each one, and what the knock-on effects are.

2. We agree your recovery targets Your RTO and RPO, written down and signed off. This is the conversation that most providers skip, and it's the one that determines everything else.

3. We design and build it Backup, replication and failover configured to hit those targets, with recovery steps documented so they can be followed by someone who wasn't there when it was set up.

4. We test it, then keep testing it Scheduled recovery tests, with results shared and the plan updated. A plan that hasn't been tested this year isn't a plan yet.

5. We review it as you change New systems, new sites, new people. We revisit the plan at your regular account reviews so it keeps matching the business.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between backup and business continuity? A backup is a copy of your data. Business continuity is the whole plan for keeping the business running and getting systems restored, including who does what, in what order, and how long it should take. Backup is one part of continuity, not a substitute for it.

What are RTO and RPO? RTO, or Recovery Time Objective, is the maximum downtime your business can tolerate before the impact becomes serious. RPO, or Recovery Point Objective, is the maximum amount of data you can afford to lose, measured in time. Agreeing both is the first real step in any continuity plan.

Does Microsoft 365 back up our data automatically? Not in the way most people assume. Microsoft keeps the service available and protects its own infrastructure, but your data in Exchange, SharePoint, Teams and OneDrive is your responsibility under their shared responsibility model. Retention periods are limited, so a separate backup is needed.

How often should a continuity plan be tested? At least once a year as a minimum, and more often if your systems change frequently or you're in a regulated sector. Testing is what turns a document into a plan. Anything that has never been restored should be treated as unproven.

How long does it take to recover from ransomware? It depends entirely on your preparation. With monitored, isolated backups and a documented recovery process, businesses are often trading again within hours. Without those, recovery can take weeks, and some data may never come back. The difference is decided long before the attack.

What happens if a backup fails? We monitor backups daily rather than waiting for a restore to discover a problem. If a job fails, it's picked up, investigated and fixed, and you're told about it. Silent backup failure is one of the most common reasons recoveries go wrong.

Do we need this if we're already in the cloud? Yes. Cloud platforms protect against their own hardware failing. They don't protect you from deletion, ransomware, a compromised account or a misconfiguration. Cloud changes where your data sits, not who's responsible for being able to recover it.

Can you work alongside our in-house IT team? Of course. Plenty of our continuity clients have their own IT people. We handle the backup platform, the monitoring and the testing, and your team keeps ownership of everything else. That's what our co-managed IT support is built for.