Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Services

When ransomware hits, a server room floods, or a critical SaaS tenant goes dark, the difference between a bad afternoon and a business-ending week is preparation. Our business continuity and disaster recovery services give you documented recovery objectives, tested runbooks, and a partner who has practiced the response before you need it.

We treat BCDR as a structured program, not a backup product. The process below is how we take a client from "we have backups somewhere" to a defensible, tested plan that leadership, auditors, and insurers can trust.

TL;DR: A working BCDR program is a documented process with measured recovery targets and rehearsed runbooks - not a line item on your backup invoice.

Step 1: Business impact analysis and risk mapping

We start by interviewing operations, finance, and department leads to identify which systems actually move the business - order entry, EHR, ERP, line-of-business apps, file shares, email, phones, and the SaaS platforms most providers overlook. Each system gets a downtime cost estimate and a dependency map so recovery sequencing reflects reality instead of alphabetical order.

Deliverables from this step typically include:

• A ranked list of critical business processes and the technology behind them
• Draft Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) per system
• Identified single points of failure across infrastructure, vendors, and staff knowledge

Step 2: Design the continuity and recovery architecture

With priorities defined, we design a recovery architecture that matches the RTO and RPO targets your leadership signed off on. That usually means a layered approach: immutable local backups for fast restores, encrypted offsite replication for ransomware and site-loss scenarios, and cloud failover for the systems that cannot tolerate hours of downtime. For Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace tenants, we add third-party backup so mailbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams data is recoverable outside the vendor's native retention.

A backup you have never restored is a hypothesis, not a recovery plan.

We also design around the human side: alternate work locations, MiFi and laptop reserves for staff, call-tree communications, and vendor escalation contacts kept somewhere reachable when your primary systems are down.

Step 3: Document runbooks and recovery procedures

A plan only helps if the person on call at 2 a.m. can execute it. We author step-by-step runbooks for the most likely scenarios - ransomware detection, domain controller loss, hypervisor failure, primary site outage, email compromise, and key SaaS vendor outages. Each runbook names the decision-makers, the technical steps, the order of operations, and the communication templates for staff, customers, and, when relevant, regulators.

Documentation is version-controlled and stored in a location accessible even when your production environment is offline. For clients under HIPAA, CMMC, or SOC 2 obligations, we map each control and evidence artifact to the relevant framework so the same work satisfies auditors.

Step 4: Tabletop exercises and live recovery testing

Plans decay. Staff turn over, applications change, and vendors update their platforms. We run scheduled tabletop exercises with your leadership team to walk through realistic scenarios, and we perform live recovery tests where we actually spin up failover copies of critical systems and verify data integrity, application behavior, and end-user access.

Every test produces a written after-action report: what worked, what did not, RTO and RPO actuals versus targets, and a remediation list with owners. This is the artifact that convinces cyber-insurance underwriters, board members, and enterprise customers that your continuity posture is real.

Step 5: Ongoing management and continuous improvement

BCDR is a living program. We monitor backup jobs and replication health daily, review capacity and retention quarterly, and refresh the full plan at least annually or after any material change - a new ERP, an acquisition, a data-center move, a shift to remote work. When your environment changes, the plan changes with it.

Clients on our managed BCDR service also get incident response coordination: if something does go wrong, the same team that wrote the runbook executes it, working alongside your cyber-insurance carrier and, when necessary, forensics and legal counsel.

Next steps

Most engagements begin with a scoping call and a lightweight BCDR readiness assessment. From there we produce a written proposal with recommended architecture, project timeline, and monthly management pricing tailored to your environment.

Why PGH Networks

We are a Pittsburgh-based managed services provider serving small and mid-market organizations across Allegheny, Washington, Westmoreland, Butler, and Beaver counties, with clients in Pittsburgh, Cranberry Township, Monroeville, Robinson, Wexford, Canonsburg, Greensburg, and the surrounding metro. Our engineers are local, on-call, and able to be on-site quickly when a recovery event calls for hands on hardware.

Our practice combines traditional infrastructure depth - Microsoft, VMware, Hyper-V, Veeam, Datto, Azure, and AWS - with compliance experience across HIPAA, PCI DSS, CMMC, and SOC 2. We also operate a growing AI-enablement practice, which matters for continuity planning as clients increasingly rely on AI workflows and custom applications that need to be part of the recovery scope, not an afterthought. That combination - local response, compliance fluency, and modern application awareness - is where our business continuity and disaster recovery services differ from a generic backup reseller.

Get a tailored proposal

Share a short description of your environment and recovery concerns, and we will scope a BCDR assessment sized to your business. You will receive a written recommendation covering architecture, RTO/RPO targets, testing cadence, and monthly investment - with no obligation to proceed.

Request your BCDR proposal

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between backup and disaster recovery?

Backup is a copy of your data. Disaster recovery is the documented, tested process of restoring systems and operations within a defined time window. You need both, and most organizations that think they have DR actually only have backups.

How long does it take to stand up a BCDR program?

A typical initial engagement - impact analysis, architecture design, runbook authoring, and the first tabletop - runs six to twelve weeks depending on environment size and complexity. Ongoing testing and management then continues as a monthly service.

Can you cover SaaS platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace?

Yes. Native vendor retention is not a backup, and we routinely add third-party protection for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce, and similar platforms so data is recoverable on your timeline, not the vendor's.

Do your plans satisfy cyber-insurance and compliance requirements?

Our documentation, testing evidence, and after-action reports are built to be handed directly to underwriters and auditors. We routinely map controls to HIPAA, CMMC, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 requirements as part of the deliverable.

What happens if we already have a backup vendor we like?

We frequently build BCDR programs around existing backup investments when they meet the RTO and RPO targets. The plan, runbooks, testing, and management wrap around whatever recovery tooling makes sense for your environment.