Co-managed IT: keeping your person and getting enterprise backup
Co-managed IT means your own IT person stays in charge of the day-to-day work, and an outside team fills the gaps that one person can't cover well on their own. The most common gap is backup. Your person knows your systems and your staff, but keeping proper, tested, off-site backups running around the clock is a job that needs dedicated tools and attention. You don't have to give up the person you trust to get that.
How co-managed IT splits the work
The split is usually clearer than people expect. Your in-house person keeps doing what only a local person can do well. They know who needs what, they handle the new starter who can't log in on Monday morning, they know which odd old system the accounts team refuses to replace, and they're the one people walk over to when something feels off.
The outside team takes on the parts that need specialist tools or round-the-clock watching. In most co-managed arrangements that includes:
- Enterprise-grade backup, with copies stored off-site and checked on a schedule
- Monitoring, so failing drives, stalled backups and unusual logins get noticed before they become outages
- Security tooling such as endpoint protection and account controls
- Cover for holidays, sickness and out-of-hours emergencies
- Extra hands on big projects, like a move to a new system, so your person isn't working alone on it
The useful test is simple. If a task needs someone who knows your people and your building, it stays with your person. If it needs a tool running 24 hours a day or a second pair of eyes that isn't tired from the last three months of tickets, it goes to the outside team. Agree that line in writing at the start, or the two groups will end up stepping on each other's work.
What enterprise backup means in practice
Plenty of businesses think they have backup because a file server copies itself to a drive in the back room. That helps with a dead disk, but it does little if ransomware encrypts the server and the copy at the same time, or if the building floods. Enterprise backup is built around a few habits that cheaper setups often skip.
The first is the 3-2-1 rule. Keep three copies of important data, on two different types of storage, with one copy stored somewhere else entirely. The off-site copy is the one that saves you when the office is unreachable.
The second is protection against deletion and tampering. Good backup systems keep copies that can't be altered or deleted by someone who has stolen an admin password, for a set period. This is what stops an attacker from wiping your recovery options before they lock your files.
The third is retention. You need several restore points, not just last night's. If a problem has been quietly corrupting files for a week, a single copy from yesterday is useless. Ask how many versions are kept and for how long.
The fourth matters most, and it's the one people skip: test restores. A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan. A proper service restores sample files and, now and then, a whole system, and records how long that took. Those times tell you what to expect on a bad day.
Don't forget cloud email and file platforms. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace keep some data, but their built-in recovery windows are short and they are not the same as a separate backup. If someone deletes a folder and it isn't noticed for a month, you want to know you can still get it back.
How to decide whether it fits you
Co-managed IT makes the most sense when you already have someone who knows your systems, but that person is stretched thin, works alone, or would be in serious trouble if they were ill or left. If that's you, the outside team protects you from the single-person risk while your person keeps the relationship with your staff.
If you have no IT person at all, the arrangement is different. You'd be looking for a fully managed service instead, where the outside team does most of the day-to-day work. The co-managed model relies on someone inside the business doing their share.
Whichever way you go, ask the same few questions before you sign anything:
- Who takes the call when a restore is needed, and how quickly do they start?
- How often are restores tested, and can I see the results?
- How many restore points are kept, and for how long?
- Are the backup copies protected from deletion, even by an admin account?
- Who holds the admin passwords, and how do they get handed over if our person leaves?
If the answers are vague, that's useful information too.
A sensible next step is to check your current backup today. Find out where the copies live, when the last one finished, and whether anyone has tried restoring a file from it in the last three months. If you can't answer those quickly, that's your starting point. Then get in touch with Tech Parachute and ask for a short review of your setup, so you know exactly what your person keeps, what the outside team would take on, and what you'd need to put in place first.