Making IT Outstanding 484-535-3600

I once sat across from a client, a seasoned business owner, sharp, no-nonsense, the kind of person who still prints receipts and files them alphabetically, while she explained how her team “lost a folder” on a Friday afternoon.

“It was just gone,” she said. “Everything from Q4: forecasts, payroll data, customer contracts. All gone. We looked everywhere.”

Of course, folders don’t just vanish. Not really. They get moved, overwritten, permissions change. A sync goes sideways, or an app auto-deletes something it thinks no one needs. In this case, it had been stored in a shared cloud folder still owned by someone who had left the company. When HR deactivated their account, the folder evaporated.

That wasn’t the first time I’d heard that story. Or the last.

We live in a time where data is scattered across more tools than we care to count. It’s in Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, Salesforce, Slack, Notion, personal email threads, maybe even someone’s private Evernote account from 2016. It’s everywhere and nowhere at once.

And the truth is, many business owners I meet—smart people, successful people—don’t know where their critical data lives. They assume their IT guy or MSP has it handled. They assume the cloud is some invincible fortress. They assume wrong.

I don’t say that with judgment. We’ve all become passengers in a vehicle we no longer fully understand. The tech stack grew almost overnight, sprawling in all directions. One app for scheduling, another for docs, another for invoices. Someone signs up for a tool with a corporate card and suddenly, company records are spread across a dozen platforms.

We never really meant to let it get this chaotic.

But then something goes sideways, like a provider outage, a rogue employee, a ransomware attack, and everyone’s asking the same question:

Where’s the data?

And the silence that follows can be deafening.

I remember another case. A nonprofit this time, who genuinely believed their cloud platform was backing everything up. It wasn’t. When a misconfiguration nuked their donor history database, they realized there had been no offsite backup. The vendor offered condolences and a shrug.

That day, the CEO of that organization looked at me and said, “We just assumed…”

I nodded. “Everyone does.”

We tend to think of backups and disaster recovery like seatbelts: necessary, but boring. We put them off until a near-miss or crash forces our attention.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the real value of your data isn’t just in having it. It’s in knowing where it is, how fast you can get it back, and who has their hands on it.

Where Critical Data Actually Resides

Let’s get specific. Critical business data today is distributed across four main domains:

First, there’s the cloud. SaaS platforms like Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Google Workspace, Sage, QuickBooks Online, and industry-specific SaaS like or HubSpot. These platforms house emails, contracts, CRM records, documents, and more.

Then there are the endpoint devices. Laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, external disks. In hybrid environments, sensitive files often get downloaded locally or created on-the-go and may never be synced back to a central repository.

Collaboration tools form the third layer. Apps like Slack, Teams, Trello, Asana, ClickUp. These are often overlooked, yet they contain key conversations, project files, and strategic documentation. Many aren’t backed up at all.

And finally, there’s the forgotten frontier: legacy systems and shadow IT. Think of that ancient Access database someone in accounting still relies on, or the Dropbox account set up by a former employee. These unofficial tools, adopted without IT’s oversight, can quietly hold sensitive or even irreplaceable information.

What I Share with Friends, Clients, and Loved Ones Seeking Clarity

When we start putting things back together, I don’t start with a tool. I start with a conversation.

“Let’s figure out what matters most,” I say. “Then let’s make sure you can find it, protect it, and bring it back if it all goes dark.”

Here’s how that usually unfolds:

We map the data. Not with fancy software (not at first), but with a whiteboard and a couple of strong coffees. Where is your financial data? Your customer data? Your HR files? What’s in the cloud, what’s on machines, what’s just in someone’s head?

We talk about the ‘what if’. What if the system you rely on most was down for a week? What if someone deleted the wrong folder? Could you get back online? How fast?

We check the assumptions. Is your SaaS app really backed up? (Spoiler: probably not the way you think.) Does your MSP test restores or just store backups? Does anyone know how long it would actually take to recover from a ransomware hit?

We look at access. Who owns which accounts? What happens when someone leaves? Too many horror stories start with, “Well, that was Jane’s login…”

The Human Factor

Of course, all of this is technical, but the impact is deeply human. When systems fail, it’s not just files and databases at risk. It’s paychecks, client relationships, investor confidence, and reputations.

That’s why MSPs started doing what I now call a data residency walk-through with clients. No jargon. Just a simple question: If your primary system went down today… email, finance, CRM, whatever, how fast could you be back up? And from where?

Most can’t answer. Not completely. Not confidently.

And it’s not because they’re negligent. It’s because no one ever explained how modern data works anymore. Not in a way that connects systems to survival.

So, the walk-through becomes a starting point. It’s a way to map out the blind spots, patch the holes, implement backup policies with testing, versioning, and clear recovery timelines. It’s a way to stop assuming.

And through that process, something shifts. People regain a sense of calm. Because what’s being built isn’t just technical security, it’s psychological security. The knowledge that if things go wrong, they’re not lost.

That they’re not starting over.

The folder might vanish, but the story doesn’t have to end there.