Short answer: You know your backups work when someone has restored a real file from them recently, and written down when and how. "Backups run every night" tells you something is being copied. It doesn't tell you whether you could get your files back on a bad Monday morning.
The three questions
1. What's being backed up? List the things you couldn't run without: shared files, accounting, patient or client records, email, your website. Then check each one is actually included. Cloud apps are easy to miss; some keep only short-term copies on their own.
2. Where do the backups live? At least one copy should be somewhere separate from your everyday systems, so a problem on your network likely can't reach it too.
3. When did someone last restore something? This is the one that matters most, and the one most often skipped.
A simple restore test
You don't need a big project. Once a month, try this:
Pick one real file that changed recently, like this week's schedule or a recent invoice.
Restore it from the backup to a different folder, so you don't overwrite anything.
Open it and make sure it's the right version and it isn't damaged.
Write it down: the date, the file, who did it, how long it took and whether it worked.
Every few months, try something bigger: a whole folder, or a mailbox.
Scoring your backups
Red (known): you have backups, or you believe your provider does.
Yellow (documented): what's backed up, where and how often is written down.
Green (tracked daily): someone checks that each night's backup finished, and there's a log of restore tests.
A green only counts if you can show the record.
If your IT provider handles it
That's great. Ask them for the date of the last restore test and a copy of the log. If they don't have one, ask whether they'd run a quick test with you. Most providers are glad to.
A quick first picture
Backups are one of the areas the Confidence Check covers. It takes about seven minutes, and your results show on screen right away.
This post is general information, not legal, tax or insurance advice.
