Backup & Business Continuity
A backup nobody has restored from is not a backup. It is a hopeful assumption with a scheduled task attached.
Backing up
The two failures we see are the same every time: something important was never included, and nobody ever tried a restore. Both are cheap to fix in advance and expensive to discover during an incident.
- Automated backup of servers, workstations and cloud data
- Offsite and cloud copies, kept separate from the originals
- Retention set to what your business and insurers actually require
- Regular test restores — the only proof a backup works
The bad day
Continuity planning is mostly a set of decisions made calmly in advance: what has to come back first, who calls whom, and how long the business can operate without each system. Writing it down beforehand is the entire exercise.
- Recovery priorities agreed before they are needed
- Documented recovery steps that someone else could follow
- Realistic recovery time and recovery point targets
- Periodic review as the business changes