Most business owners in London, Ontario, assume their business would recover if they lost their data. After all, there’s a backup running in the background.
The problem is that having a backup doesn’t necessarily mean you can get your business back up and running quickly. It depends on what’s being backed up, whether it can be restored, and how long that process takes when people are waiting to get back to work.
Business continuity in London, Ontario, starts with recovery
Veeam’s 2025 Ransomware Trends and Proactive Strategies Report, based on a survey of 1,300 organizations, found that among businesses hit by ransomware, only 10 percent recovered more than 90 percent of their data. Fifty-seven percent recovered less than half. These are businesses that already had backup systems in place before the attack.
That usually isn’t because the backup software failed. More often, it’s because recovery involves far more than restoring a copy of your files.
User accounts still need to work. The correct versions of data need to have been retained. Servers need to start successfully. Network settings must match the restored environment. Someone also needs to know the recovery process well enough to carry it out under pressure.
If any one of those pieces is missing, the backup may be intact while the business remains offline.
What data backup in London, Ontario, often misses
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is assuming every important system is protected.
Microsoft 365 is a common example. Because data lives in the cloud, many businesses believe Microsoft provides a complete backup service. Microsoft’s own service agreement makes clear that protecting your data is a shared responsibility. Emails, SharePoint files, and OneDrive data are all subject to retention periods and deletion policies. If someone accidentally deletes information or ransomware encrypts synchronized files, native recovery options may only be available for a limited time.
The same issue applies to laptops, cloud accounting platforms, CRM systems, and the software individual departments have adopted over time without IT involvement.
A good backup strategy starts with knowing exactly where your business data lives. Once you have that inventory, you can confirm every system is protected. Without it, there’s every chance something important has been overlooked.
How long disaster recovery for a small business in London, ON, really takes
A backup only has value if you can restore it within a timeframe your business can tolerate.
The Veeam research found that while 60 percent of organizations expected to recover within hours, only 35 percent managed to do so. For ransomware incidents, average downtime was around three to four weeks. Statistics Canada’s most recent Canadian Survey of Cyber Security and Cybercrime, published in 2024, found that total Canadian business recovery spending doubled to approximately $1.2 billion, driven largely by extended downtime and the outside expertise needed to restore operations.
Those delays quickly become expensive. Employees still need paying, deadlines don’t disappear, and customers still expect a response. Smaller businesses often feel the impact even more because every employee usually plays several roles, making it much harder to work around unavailable systems.
The only way to know how long recovery will really take is to test it. Running a full restore and measuring the time from the initial decision through to the first productive user provides a far more accurate picture than assumptions ever will.
The IT disaster recovery plan Ontario businesses often skip
Installing backup software is only the first step. The recovery process also needs to be tested.
The Veeam research highlights how often businesses overestimate their preparedness. Before an attack, 69 percent of ransomware victims believed they were ready. After going through the recovery process, confidence fell by more than 20 percentage points. Only 44 percent of organizations had verified their core technical recovery capabilities before the incident occurred.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security also identifies backup testing as an essential part of any recovery strategy rather than an optional exercise.
Testing doesn’t need to become a major project. Restoring a defined set of data into a clean environment every month, timing the process, and documenting the outcome are often enough to identify missing dependencies, expired credentials, or configuration changes that would otherwise remain hidden until a real incident.
A disaster recovery plan is only as good as the last successful recovery test.
Why every business continuity plan needs clear responsibilities
Technology is only part of the recovery process.
If your systems became unavailable tomorrow morning, would everyone know what happens next?
In many businesses, recovery knowledge sits with one person. That might be the owner, an internal IT manager, or an external provider. If that person is unavailable, valuable time can be lost working out who has access to accounts, who can authorize decisions, or who should communicate with customers and insurers.
A documented recovery plan removes that uncertainty. It sets out who holds key credentials, who declares an incident, who contacts suppliers, and who keeps staff and customers informed.
Those decisions are much easier to make before a crisis than during one.
Finding out before you need to know
Your backup and recovery process shouldn’t be based on assumptions.
A proper recovery test will show exactly what’s protected, what isn’t, and how long it takes to get your business operational again. That gives you the opportunity to fix weaknesses before they become costly interruptions.
If you’d like a clearer picture of how your current setup would perform, our business continuity team offers a complimentary IT assessment. We’ll review your backup coverage, assess your restore readiness, and show you how quickly your business could realistically recover from an outage.
We work with businesses across Southwestern Ontario, including a growing client base in London, ON. Book your assessment today and find out how well your business would recover before a real incident exposes gaps you didn’t know existed.
