The 3-2-1 backup strategy is a simple rule that protects your business from data loss: keep three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, with one copy stored offsite. If you follow this rule, no single event, whether a hardware crash, a ransomware attack, a fire, or a theft, can destroy all your business data.
This approach has been the standard in IT for decades because it works. It accounts for the reality that any single backup can fail, any single location can be compromised, and any single type of storage can have a systemic problem. The 3-2-1 rule builds in enough redundancy that you can survive any one of those failures.
The 3-2-1 Rule Explained
3 copies of your data. You keep the original production data plus two separate backups. If one backup turns out to be corrupted or incomplete, you still have another to fall back on. A single backup is a single point of failure, and single points of failure are exactly what a backup strategy is supposed to eliminate.
2 different types of storage media. Do not keep all copies on the same kind of storage. If your production data is on a hard drive and your only backup is on another hard drive in the same location, a power surge, flood, or fire could take out both at the same time. By using two different types of storage, such as a local backup appliance and a cloud backup service, you protect against a failure mode that affects one storage type but not the other.
1 copy offsite. At least one of your backups must be physically separate from your office. A backup on an external hard drive sitting on the desk next to the computer it backs up will not survive the same fire, flood, or theft. An offsite copy, whether in the cloud or at a different physical location, ensures that a disaster at your office does not take your backups with it.
Why This Matters for Small Businesses
The statistics are sobering. A significant percentage of small businesses that lose their data permanently close their doors within months. The common causes of data loss, such as hardware failure, ransomware, accidental deletion, theft, fire, and water damage, are not exotic edge cases. They happen to real businesses every day.
There is also a widespread misconception that cloud services like Microsoft 365 fully back up your data. They do not. Microsoft operates under a shared responsibility model: Microsoft is responsible for keeping the service running, but you are responsible for protecting your data from accidental deletion, malicious insiders, and retention gaps. Microsoft retains deleted items for a limited time (30 to 93 days depending on the service), not indefinitely. If you need to recover a file that was deleted four months ago and you do not have a separate backup, it is gone.
Copy 1: Your Live Data (The Original)
This is the data your team works with every day. It lives on your employees' computers, your file servers, and your cloud services like Microsoft 365 Business Premium (which includes OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online).
This is not a backup. It is the primary copy that everything else is designed to protect. If this copy is compromised by ransomware, corrupted by a hardware failure, or deleted by accident or malice, you need to be able to recover from the other two copies.
Copy 2: A Local or Near-Line Backup
The second copy provides fast recovery for everyday issues like accidental file deletion, hardware failure, or a corrupted database. Because it is local (on your network or physically in your office), restoring data from it is fast.
For on-premises data such as local servers, workstations, and network drives, Athencia deploys Slide as an on-premises backup appliance. Slide runs automated backups on a schedule, typically daily or more frequently for critical systems, and stores them locally for quick recovery. If an employee accidentally deletes an important folder or a server drive fails, restoration from Slide is fast because the data does not need to travel over the internet.
For Microsoft 365 data, you need a third-party backup service because Microsoft's native retention policies are not a backup. A third-party backup service like Dropsuite, which Athencia includes in its managed IT stack, automatically backs up Microsoft 365 email, OneDrive, and SharePoint data independently from Microsoft's retention policies. This means you can recover data even after Microsoft's own retention windows have expired, whether that is an email from six months ago or a file that was deleted and purged from the recycle bin.
Copy 3: An Offsite or Cloud Backup
The third copy protects against events that affect your entire office: fire, flood, theft, or ransomware that encrypts every device on your network including local backup drives.
This copy must be physically separate from your office. Cloud backup services are the most practical option for most small businesses because they require no hardware at a second location and update automatically.
For the cloud backup of Microsoft 365 data, Dropsuite stores backups in its own cloud infrastructure, completely separate from your Microsoft tenant. For on-premises data, Slide can replicate backups to an offsite cloud target, giving you a second copy of your local data in a different location. Together with the production data in Microsoft 365 itself, this satisfies all three requirements of the 3-2-1 strategy.
This offsite copy should be immutable or air-gapped whenever possible. An immutable backup cannot be modified or deleted by ransomware, even if an attacker gains administrative access to your network. This is your last line of defense, and it needs to be bulletproof.
Implementing 3-2-1 on a Small Business Budget
You do not need an enterprise budget to implement a proper 3-2-1 backup strategy. Here is what a practical setup looks like for a typical five-to-fifteen person office.
Start with Microsoft 365 backup. If your business runs on Microsoft 365 (email, OneDrive, SharePoint), protecting that data should be your first priority. A service like Dropsuite typically costs a few dollars per user per month and covers email, OneDrive, and SharePoint backup with point-in-time recovery. This is the highest-impact, lowest-effort step you can take.
Add on-premises backup if you have local servers or data. If your business still has data on local servers, workstations, or network drives, a backup appliance like Slide protects that data with automated local backups and optional offsite replication. The cost depends on the amount of data and the retention period, but it is affordable for most small businesses.
If you cannot do everything at once, prioritize. Start with Microsoft 365 backup (Dropsuite) because that is where most of your critical business data lives. Add on-premises backup next. Then verify that the offsite/cloud replication is working for both. You can build toward a complete 3-2-1 strategy incrementally rather than trying to do it all at once.
The Part Most Businesses Skip: Testing Your Backups
A backup you have never restored is not a backup. It is a hope. Until you have actually recovered data from a backup and verified that it is complete and usable, you do not truly know if your backup works.
Test a restore at least once per quarter. Pick a random file, email, or folder from your backup and restore it to a temporary location. Open it and verify it is intact. Rotate what you test each quarter so you cover different data sources over time.
Check backup reports weekly. Log in to your backup dashboards (Dropsuite, Slide, or both) and verify that jobs are completing successfully. Look for failures, warnings, or missed schedules. If your backups are managed through Athencia, backup health is visible through the Athencia One portal, but a quick manual check still builds confidence.
Know your RTO and RPO. Your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is how long it would take to restore operations from backup. Your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is how much data you can afford to lose. If you back up daily, your worst-case RPO is 24 hours of work. If that is unacceptable for certain systems, you need more frequent backups for those systems. These numbers should be documented and reviewed at least annually.
Need Help?
Setting up a 3-2-1 backup strategy does not have to be complicated. If you want help designing a backup plan that fits your business and budget, contact Athencia and we will help you get it done right.
