Backup Restore Testing — Can You Actually Recover?
We test your backups for real — not just your MSP's 'green status'.
Who is it for?
Any organization that has never tested its restores.
Municipalities, MRCs, townships and public bodies and SMEs wanting to validate their provider's promises. Factero Advisory Services is registered on the SEAO (Quebec) and the Ontario Tenders Portal (Ontario).
Organizations that recently changed IT providers or backup solutions and want to confirm the transition went smoothly.
Growing companies that have added systems or cloud environments and have never validated that their new data is properly covered.
Organizations preparing for a transaction — acquisition, merger, or financing — that need to document their operational resilience.
Boards or management teams seeking independent confirmation of their operational resilience — not out of distrust toward their provider, but because external validation is part of good governance.
Organizations that have experienced a past incident and want to ensure their backup environment is now reliable and tested.
When does it help?
- You've never tested a full restore.
- Your provider confirms that backups are running without issues — and that's good news. But a successful backup execution doesn't guarantee it will be restorable the day you actually need it. The independent test complements what your provider is already doing well.
- You want to know how much time and data you'd lose in an incident.
- You want to objectively validate what your IT team or provider has put in place — and document that it works.
- Your cyber insurer requires documented proof of restoration testing for policy underwriting or renewal.
- Your provider confirms backups are in order — and they probably genuinely believe it. But confirming that backups run without errors isn't the same as knowing what actually happens the day you need them. A restoration test is the equivalent of a full fire drill — not just checking where the exits are, but simulating the full evacuation under real conditions. We restore for real, in an isolated environment, at full scale. And we come back with clear findings: gaps to fix if they exist, or in most cases, the peace of mind that everything is in order — with the documentation to prove it.
What will you receive?
Documented test report: what works, what doesn't.
Realistic RPO/RTO figures based on the test.
If your RPO and RTO are not yet defined, we establish them with you based on the test results — in concrete terms: how many hours of downtime and how much data loss your organization can realistically absorb.
Concrete recommendations if gaps are identified.
A management-language reading: how many hours of downtime and data loss your current RPO/RTO represent — so leadership can assess real financial exposure.
Test report formatted to meet cyber insurer documentation requirements — results, tested environment, measured RPO/RTO, recommendations.
Analysis and validation of your existing disaster recovery plan — if you have one. We verify whether it's realistic, current, and consistent with what the test revealed. If you don't have one yet, we point you toward where to start.
Not a good fit?
- If your backups have already been tested in a real restoration by an independent third party in the last 12 months and the documentation is current, you may already have what you need. If that's not the case — or if the last test was done internally — that's exactly what this service is for.