Data Protection & Ransomware Resilience

They are write‑once copies that cannot be altered or deleted within the retention window, preventing attackers from encrypting or erasing them.

Yes. We maintain offline or logically isolated copies to ensure a clean recovery path.

We work with application owners to define business‑aligned objectives and design the platform accordingly.

They keep the service available, but under the shared-responsibility model, recovering deleted or encrypted data and keeping long-term retention is up to you. An independent backup copy means recovery doesn't depend on the platform you're trying to recover.

No. Purview and Vault focus on compliance, eDiscovery and retention controls inside the platform. Backup gives you a separate copy you can restore from. Many regulated organisations use both.

By default, your team does. If nobody owns monitoring, failed-backup fixes and restore testing, including after hours, add the Managed Backup Service and FirstNet takes care of it.

At least quarterly is a good benchmark. If you can't show recent restore tests and audit evidence when asked, that is usually the sign to bring in managed operations.

For server and VM backups, the Non-Core vault catalogue includes South African regions. For SaaS backup we confirm hosting regions during qualification, as availability varies by service.

FirstNet Microsoft 365 Backup, powered by Druva, protects Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Teams, Groups and Microsoft Entra ID, as configured. It keeps an independent copy of that data outside your Microsoft 365 tenant, so you can search for and restore individual items, whole users or whole sites after deletion or a ransomware incident. It is licensed per protected user, and there are no backup servers for you to run.

Yes. FirstNet Google Workspace Backup, powered by Druva, protects Gmail, Google Drive (including Shared Drives), Calendar and Contacts, as configured. It gives you an independent copy that you can search and restore when data is deleted or encrypted, without running any backup infrastructure. It is licensed per protected user. If you use both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, the two subscriptions can be combined so you have one approach across both platforms.

Often, yes. Not all business data lives in OneDrive or Google Drive, and files kept only on a device can be lost if the device is lost, fails or is hit by local ransomware. FirstNet Endpoint Backup protects selected user and device data on Windows, macOS and Linux laptops and desktops, and is licensed per protected device. It does not cover Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace application data, which needs its own backup subscription.

It depends on what you are restoring. A single email or a single OneDrive or Drive file typically takes minutes. A full user's mailbox and OneDrive typically takes hours. A full SharePoint site or Teams content can take from hours up to one or two days. A bulk event affecting many users can take days and is managed through a prioritised plan. These are typical ranges, not guarantees: size, Microsoft throttling and connectivity all affect them, and a short proof of concept can confirm a hard requirement.

The service is designed so you don't have to plan around storage caps or capacity calculations. It is licensed per protected user, or per protected device for endpoints, rather than per gigabyte of backup storage. Your retention requirement, and any fair-use conditions, are confirmed when the service is scoped. Unusual retention needs, such as legal hold, are reviewed separately so the service is set up to match them.

No. FirstNet Cloud Backup Services are cloud-native, so there are no backup servers or storage for you to buy, install or maintain. You choose the workloads to protect, which can be Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, endpoints or any combination, and the service keeps an independent copy that you can restore from. If you don't have staff to monitor jobs and handle restores, an optional managed backup service adds FirstNet-run monitoring, remediation, reporting and restore support.

The 3-2-1 rule calls for an offsite copy of your backups. If you already run Veeam on-premises, you can add FirstNet's Cloud Connect repository and create a backup copy job that sends each nightly backup to a FirstNet cloud vault. That gives you a geographically separate copy without new hardware or separate backup software. If a disaster affects both your primary site and your local backups, the cloud copy is still available to restore from.