Backup And Disaster Recovery Testing For MSPs And Enterprise Organizations

By Matt Seeley, Carbonite

Our last post on backup and recovery testing was intended for small to midsize businesses (SMBs). In this post, we’ll look at the same topic but with an eye toward managed service providers (MSPs) and enterprise organizations.

The ability to recover from data loss is a measure of cyber fitness. As with any good fitness plan, it requires regular workouts as part of an overall fitness regimen. The difference is, instead of lifting heavier weights for more reps, the goal you’re working toward is assurance that service level agreements (SLAs) can be met. To get started, take an accounting of all the systems, software and platforms in the organization and create categories:

• Mission-critical to the business
  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO) or acceptable downtime
  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO) or acceptable loss of data
  • The people who accesses this information
  • The department responsible for the application or platform
  • Total cost of downtime

• Important to the business but can do without for a period of time
  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO) or acceptable downtime
  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO) or acceptable loss of data
  • The people who accesses this information
  • The department responsible for the application or platform
  • Total cost of downtime