
In addition, concentrate on recovery time rather than backup speed. After all, restoring your mission-critical Oracle database quickly is of essentially no value unless you have also restored the components required to bring it up and enable users to access it. Understand dependencies of the data.Īs you build out your data recovery plan, think through the dependencies involved in restoring not just data, but access to that data. It’s vital to work toward establishing a Zero Trust model. Hackers are now actively attempting to bribe employees to plant malware, for instance.

A standard risk assessment matrixĭuring this process, be sure to consider insider threats as well as external attacks. Here is a standard risk assessment matrix for categorizing risks as low, medium, high or extreme, based on the combination of their probability and impact:įigure 3. Planning and prioritization Uncover and assess vulnerabilities.Īnother core step in developing a data recovery plan is to uncover weaknesses that adversaries can take advantage of, and then prioritize them by assessing both the likelihood of that happening and the potential damage that could result. Defining recovery metrics for each classification 2. Here’s an example of the resulting extended table for a data recovery plan:įigure 2. GRO addresses where backups will be stored and how that affects the other recovery requirements for example, RTO might be longer when recovering from a disaster recovery site than from a local backup. To establish the VRO, ask how recent a version of the data you need to be able to restore. In many cases, you will want to go deeper and also set a version recovery objective (VRO) and a geographical recovery objective (GRO). You will need to help them understand just how costly that goal would be, and agree upon reasonable, balanced expectations for your data recovery plan. Remember that their initial response is likely to be that they require zero downtime and zero data loss. Work with stakeholders to determine how quickly the data needs to be restored and how much data loss is acceptable. Next, it’s time to establish the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) for each type of data. Take it from Gartner: “The restore process from many well-documented ransomware attacks has been hindered by not having an intact Active Directory restore process.” Establish recovery goals. In short, your business is dead in the water. Without Active Directory, users cannot log on to their endpoints or access IT assets, and applications and services cannot run. Active Directory provides the authentication and authorization services that enable your IT ecosystem to function. Note that Active Directory also falls squarely into this category. The highest classification, mission critical, includes things like databases used for financial transactions, which are vital to keeping the business alive and meeting contractual and legal requirements. For instance, tools like Microsoft 365 and SharePoint are essential to user collaboration and communication, so the sensitive data stored there might be assigned to a higher classification than file systems, which might change less often. To decide which data falls into each category, think about how dynamic it is and how vital it is to core business functions. This is only an example you may decide that your recovery plan needs a different set of classifications.

The table below shows a data grouping with three classifications: static, business vital and mission critical. Which data and applications are most essential to the organization? What can you survive a little longer without? Which data is mostly static? Exactly where is the data located? The first step in developing a data backup disaster recovery plan is to group your data.

Inventory and assessment Group your data and applications. The core strategies for establishing a sound data recovery plan can be grouped into four areas: Building a solid data recovery plan: the four key areas As Gartner states, “Trying to improvise a recovery process in the aftermath of an attack will inevitably lead to mistakes and prolong the outage.” īut what does a data recovery plan include? How can you ensure yours is effective for both ransomware recovery and recovery from other threats? This post will walk you through what you need to know. The key to speeding recovery and getting your business back on its feet is having a solid, tested data backup disaster recovery plan. You cannot eliminate these threats - but you can maximize your resilience when they strike. After all, threats to your IT ecosystem are inevitable, from cyberattacks like ransomware to weather emergencies like wildfires and hurricanes to devastating mistakes by overworked IT pros. Experts emphasize that a solid data recovery plan is vital for every organization.
