RPO and RTO without jargon walls
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) answers “how stale can data be?” Recovery Time Objective (RTO) answers “how long can this system be down?” A marketing blog might tolerate a day of loss; a ledger cannot. Write targets per service tier, not one org-wide number that nobody believes.
3-2-1 as a mnemonic, not a religion
Three copies, two media types, one offsite is a useful default. Adapt to cloud object storage and immutable snapshots where ransomware resilience matters. The invariant is independence: backups that an attacker can delete with the same stolen admin credential are not backups.
Encrypt, version, and verify
Encrypt at rest and in transit; keep keys separate from ciphertext where feasible. Version your backup tooling so restores from five-year-old tapes are not the only path. Automated verification—checksums, spot restores—beats green checkmarks on a dashboard nobody opens.
Restore drills beat policy PDFs
Quarterly, pick a random database and restore it to an isolated environment. Time the steps. Update runbooks with friction you discover. Pair drills with documentation people actually use so on-call is not guessing mount options at 2 a.m.
Self-hosted specifics
When you host locally, include OS configuration, TLS certificates, and secrets stores in scope—not only application DBs. Hardware choices from server equipment trade-offs affect how fast you can rebuild.
Further reading
- NIST SP 800-34 Rev. 1 — Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems (broadly applicable framing).
- NIST SP 800-184 — Guide for Cybersecurity Event Recovery (PDF).
- PostgreSQL backup and restore — example of vendor-neutral DB guidance.
- RFC 4880 — OpenPGP Message Format (relevant when encrypting archives).
Talk to us
We help teams define tiers, select tooling, and run the first uncomfortable restore exercises.
Contact EasyGoin Services