Cove Data Protection — Cloud-First Backup and Recovery
Backup is not optional — it is business survival. When ransomware encrypts your files, when hardware fails, when an employee accidentally deletes critical data, your backup is the difference between a brief disruption and a business-ending event. Cove Data Protection delivers cloud-first, appliance-free backup with immutable storage that ransomware cannot touch. Combined with automated recovery testing that proves your backups work, Cove is the Recover pillar of OAS's Three Pillar Managed Security framework.
The Backup Reality Check
Most organisations believe their backup works. Few have ever tested it. When a ransomware incident occurs and the backup fails — or the backup was encrypted alongside the production data because it sat on the same network — the consequences are catastrophic.
Traditional backup solutions rely on on-site appliances, local storage, and tape rotation. They are expensive to maintain, vulnerable to the same threats as your production systems, and rarely tested for actual recoverability.
Cove Data Protection takes a fundamentally different approach.
Cove: Cloud-First, Appliance-Free
Cove backs up your data directly to N-able's private cloud — bypassing on-site appliances entirely. No backup servers to maintain. No tape drives. No local storage vulnerable to ransomware, theft, or hardware failure.
Server Backup
Physical and virtual servers backed up directly to the cloud:
- Windows, Linux, and macOS servers
- Microsoft Exchange Server and SQL Server
- VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines
- File-level and full system backup
Workstation Backup
Endpoint data protection for your distributed workforce:
- Documents, desktop files, and application settings backed up from anywhere
- Direct-to-cloud — no need to connect to the office network
- Essential for remote and hybrid workers whose laptops contain business-critical data
Microsoft 365 Backup
Microsoft provides infrastructure uptime. Microsoft does not back up your data. If an employee deletes a mailbox, if a malicious insider purges files, if a retention policy gap loses historical data — Microsoft's shared responsibility model means that data is gone.
Cove addresses this gap:
- Exchange backed up up to six times per day
- SharePoint (including Teams files) backed up up to four times per day
- OneDrive file backup
- Granular restore — individual emails, contacts, calendar items, files, and Teams conversations
TrueDelta Technology
Traditional backup solutions copy entire files or images for each backup cycle. Cove's TrueDelta technology tracks changes at the block level — backing up only the data that has actually changed.
The result: incremental backups that are up to 60 times smaller than traditional image-based solutions. Faster transfers. More restore points within the same backup window. Improved Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).
Ransomware Cannot Reach Your Backups
Cove's cloud-stored backups are:
- Encrypted — AES-256 encryption at rest and in transit
- Immutable — backups cannot be modified or deleted by ransomware
- Isolated — stored in N-able's private cloud, completely separated from your production network
When ransomware encrypts your production systems, your Cove backups remain clean, intact, and ready to restore. Combined with SentinelOne's ransomware rollback, OAS provides two independent recovery paths — immediate file restoration via SentinelOne, and full system recovery via Cove.
Disaster Recovery Options
Cove provides multiple recovery methods to match your business continuity requirements:
| Recovery Method | What It Does |
|---|---|
| File and Folder Restore | Granular recovery of individual files and folders |
| Bare-Metal Recovery | Full system restore to same or different physical hardware |
| Virtual Recovery — Hyper-V | Restore as a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine |
| Virtual Recovery — VMware | Restore as a VMware ESXi virtual machine |
| Virtual Recovery — Azure | Restore as a Microsoft Azure virtual machine |
| Standby Image | Pre-staged bootable VM for near-instant failover — Hyper-V, ESXi, or Azure |
| Continuous Restore | Ongoing restoration for near-real-time recovery readiness |
Standby Image: Near-Zero Downtime
For organisations where downtime is measured in lost revenue — healthcare, financial services, manufacturing — Standby Image proactively stages a bootable virtual machine in Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, or Microsoft Azure. If your production server fails, the standby VM is ready to take over. Near-instant failover without the cost of duplicate hardware.
Automated Recovery Testing
Can you prove your backups work?
Most organisations cannot. Cove can.
Automated Recovery Testing runs every 14 or 30 days — fully automated, with no manual setup required:
- Creates a virtual machine in N-able's secure cloud
- Boots the machine from your backup
- Captures a screenshot to verify the system is bootable
- AI and machine learning verification achieves over 99% success rate
The result: documented, auditable proof that your backups are recoverable. Critical for POPIA, FSCA, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS compliance audits. No local resources consumed — testing runs entirely in N-able's cloud.
Data Sovereignty
All South African client data is stored within South African borders. Cove operates 30 data centre locations across five continents, with facilities that support SA data residency requirements.
Cloud storage — including archiving — is included in the subscription price. No separate storage fees. No surprises.
Key Capabilities
- Direct-to-cloud backup — no on-site appliances required
- TrueDelta technology — up to 60x smaller incremental backups
- M365 backup — Exchange 6x/day, SharePoint 4x/day, OneDrive
- Ransomware-resilient — AES-256 encrypted, immutable, isolated
- Multiple recovery methods — file-level, bare-metal, virtual, Standby Image
- Automated Recovery Testing — every 14/30 days with AI verification
- Data sovereignty — SA data residency supported, storage included
- Multi-tenant management — managed by OAS from the N-central console
Delivered as a Managed Service by OAS
OAS deploys, configures, and monitors Cove across your environment through the N-able platform:
- Backup configuration — schedules, retention policies, and recovery methods tailored to your business requirements
- Daily monitoring — OAS monitors backup success/failure status and addresses issues immediately
- Recovery Testing oversight — automated testing results reviewed by OAS, with any issues escalated and resolved
- Compliance reporting — backup status and recovery testing documentation for audit purposes
- Recovery execution — when you need to restore, OAS manages the process from start to finish
Your Last Line of Defence
Prevention fails. Detection misses. When both layers are breached, your backup is all that stands between a brief disruption and a business-ending event. Cove Data Protection, managed by OAS as the Recover pillar of the Three Pillar framework, ensures your data is always protected, always recoverable, and always proven.