Ensuring business continuity
After a major incident only one question counts: how long before you are operational again, and with which data? Answering it takes objectives owned by the business and a capability that has actually been tested — not a binder updated once a year.
Objectives you own, and the proof that they hold
Continuity rests on two simple figures. The RPO defines the tolerable data loss: how far back can you go? The RTO defines the acceptable delay before service resumes. Both are business decisions, not technical settings — which is why they are set with the departments concerned, on the basis of an impact analysis.
The classic mistake is to publish ambitious objectives that the infrastructure cannot meet: backups too far apart, restorations never timed, dependencies forgotten. On the day of the incident, the gap is paid in full.
We make the capability credible: rank the activities, set reachable objectives, align the backup and recovery architecture, then verify through restoration tests and a crisis exercise that the whole thing works — teams included.
- RTO and RPO published but never verified
- Backups untested, or reachable from the compromised domain
- Critical dependencies (suppliers, cloud) not taken into account
- No crisis organisation identified or trained
- Recovery documentation out of date, or stored on the system to be restored
The two windows that determine your recovery
How we proceed
From the business towards the technology: decide what must come back first, then build the corresponding means.
Business impact analysis (BIA)
Identification of the essential activities, of the outage they can tolerate and of their dependencies — applications, data, suppliers and key people.
RTO / RPO objectives
Setting the objectives per activity with the business, weighing ambition against cost. This is the step where the trade-off is made explicitly rather than inherited implicitly.
BCP and DRP plans
Formalising degraded-mode operation (BCP) and the technical recovery procedures (DRP): restart order, prerequisites, roles and fallback means of communication.
Technical alignment
Bringing backups and architecture into line with the objectives: frequency, immutability, isolation of the copies from the domain, and timed restorations.
Exercises and upkeep
A crisis exercise (table top) and real restoration tests, then an update of the capability. A plan is alive: it is reassessed at every significant change to the information system.
Several disciplines, a single point of contact
Continuity mixes governance, architecture and lessons from real incidents — we bring all three.
- Business impact analysis (BIA)
- RTO and RPO objectives approved by the business
- Continuity (BCP) and recovery (DRP) plans
- Recommendations on backups and architecture
- Exercise report and restoration test results
Frequently asked questions
How long would it take you to come back?
An impact analysis and a restoration test give a factual answer — often different from the expected one.