Cove Data Protection — Cloud-First Backup and Recovery

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:

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:

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:

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:

1. Creates a virtual machine in N-able's secure cloud
2. Boots the machine from your backup
3. Captures a screenshot to verify the system is bootable
4. 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

Delivered as a Managed Service by OAS

OAS deploys, configures, and monitors Cove across your environment through the N-able platform:

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.

→ Learn more about our Cove Data Protection partnership