Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery — Resilience You Can Prove
BCP/DR ensures your organization can continue critical services and recover systems/data under stress—outage, ransomware, cloud incident, vendor failure, natural disaster.
SolveForce builds BCP/DR as a system: continuity mapping → immutable backups → orchestrated failover → tested runbooks → executive communications—wired to SIEM/SOAR so you have evidence on demand.
Connective tissue:
💾 Backups → /cloud-backup • 🔒 Immutability → /backup-immutability • 🚨 DRaaS → /draas
📊 Evidence/Automation → /siem-soar • 🧪 Exercises → /tabletop • 🚨 IR → /incident-response
☁️ Cloud → /cloud • 🔀 Network → /sd-wan • 🔐 Access → /ztna / /nac • 🌐 Front Door → /waf
🎯 Outcomes (Why BCP/DR with SolveForce)
- Continuity by design — critical processes mapped to people/tech/vendors with documented workarounds.
- Ransomware resilience — clean-point catalog + immutable backups + isolated recovery networks.
- Orchestrated DR — apps, data, identity, DNS/WAF, and networking fail over together.
- Auditor-ready — runbooks, test artifacts, approvals, and SLOs exported to SIEM or compliance portals.
- Faster recovery — drills reduce RTO/RPO, increase confidence, and uncover single points of failure.
🧭 Scope (What We Build & Operate)
- BCP — Business Impact Analysis (BIA), Recovery Time/Point Objectives (RTO/RPO), continuity plans per process, alternate procedures, comms trees.
- Backup & Immutability — Object-Lock/WORM, MFA Delete, air-gap accounts, cross-region. → /backup-immutability
- DR architecture — Pilot-Light • Warm Standby • Hot/Active-Active patterns; app dependency graphs; identity & network cutover. → /draas
- Runbooks — application, database, network, identity, DNS/WAF, comms, and vendor contact packs.
- Tests & drills — Tabletop (TTX), functional component tests, partial & full failovers with artifacts. → /tabletop
- Observability & evidence — dashboards, logs, screenshots, checksums to SIEM/SOAR. → /siem-soar
🧱 Program Building Blocks (Spelled Out)
- Business Impact Analysis (BIA) — rank processes/apps; map owners, upstream/downstream, and minimum viable service.
- Tiering & SLAs — Tier-1/2/3 with target RTO/RPO; assign DR pattern per tier.
- Data strategy — backup schedules, retention, legal holds; clean-point identification & catalog.
- Identity & Access — SSO/MFA, break-glass accounts (short TTL), PAM approvals & recording. → /pam
- Network & Edge — SD-WAN brownout policies; DNS/WAF cutover; Anycast withdraw options. → /sd-wan • /waf
- Security posture — ZTNA for recovery access; isolated recovery VPC/VNet; EDR on recovered hosts. → /ztna • /mdr-xdr
- Vendors & SaaS — continuity SLAs, export/restore paths, and contact trees included in runbooks.
🚦 DR Tiers & Patterns
- Pilot-Light — minimal DB/services warm; scale on failover. Lowest cost; longer RTO.
- Warm Standby — full stack sized down; DNS/WAF cutover; autoscale. Balanced cost/perf.
- Hot / Active-Active — continuous replication, instant failover. Lowest RTO; highest cost.
- App-Specific — SaaS failover, blue/green, or multi-region serverless where supported.
📐 SLO Guardrails (Commit to Numbers)
| Tier / KPI | Tier-1 (Mission) | Tier-2 (Business) | Tier-3 (Archive) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RTO (time to serve) | ≤ 5–60 min | ≤ 30–120 min | ≤ 4–24 h |
| RPO (max data loss) | ≤ 0–15 min | ≤ 15–60 min | ≤ 24 h |
| Backup success (rolling 30d) | ≥ 99% | ≥ 98% | ≥ 98% |
| Immutability coverage (in-scope sets) | = 100% | = 100% | = 100% |
| Test-restore cadence | Monthly | Quarterly | Semiannual |
| Evidence completeness (tests/incidents) | = 100% | = 100% | = 100% |
SLO breaches open tickets and trigger SOAR runbooks (retry, re-target, escalate). → /siem-soar
🧰 Cutover & Recovery (No-Drama Playbooks)
- DNS/WAF — staged weight shifts, health gates, instant rollback.
- Identity — rotate keys/secrets; PIM/JIT elevation; break-glass audit.
- Network — SD-WAN path pinning; Anycast withdraw; temporary rate guards.
- Data — restore from immutable snapshot; checksum/row-count parity; promote primary.
- Comms — stakeholder matrix (execs, legal, HR, PR, regulators, customers); templated updates.
🧪 Testing Matrix
- TTX (tabletop) — decision making, comms, ownership; 60–120 min. → /tabletop
- Component — restore single DB/app; prove clean-point & checksums.
- Partial failover — service group to DR region/site.
- Full failover/failback — Tier-1 apps; include identity, DNS/WAF, and networking; collect artifacts.
Artifacts: runbook excerpt, timestamps, screenshots, checksums, SLO board captures, decision log, AAR.
🔒 Compliance Mapping (Examples)
- PCI DSS — immutable backups, key custody, DR evidence, CDE segmentation.
- HIPAA — integrity controls, audit logs, minimum necessary, breach notification linkage.
- SOX / ISO 27001 / SOC 2 — change, access, logging, incident & continuity proofs.
- NIST 800-53/171 / CMMC — CP/IR/AU/AC families; continuous monitoring via SIEM.
- CJIS / NERC CIP / IEC 62443 — enclave-specific DR, vendor access controls, evidence retention.
📊 Observability & Evidence
- Dashboards — RTO/RPO attainment, backup success, immutability drift, DR readiness.
- Logs — backup/restore jobs, key events (KMS/HSM), WAF/DNS changes, EDR isolation, SOAR actions.
- AAR — post-exercise/incident report with gaps & owners.
All exported to SIEM; SOAR automates rollback/revoke/notify with approval trails. → /siem-soar
🛠️ Implementation Blueprint (No-Surprise Rollout)
1) BIA & tiers — classify processes/apps; set RTO/RPO & DR pattern per tier.
2) Backups — schedules, retention, immutability, air-gap accounts; clean-point catalog. → /backup-immutability
3) DR design — regions/sites, identity & network cutover, DNS/WAF plan, data replication. → /draas
4) Runbooks — technical + executive comms; vendor contact packs; approval matrix.
5) Access — ZTNA for recovery users; PAM for elevation; break-glass with TTL. → /ztna • /pam
6) Tests — TTX → component → partial → full failover/failback; store artifacts. → /tabletop
7) Operate — monthly dashboards; quarterly drills; annual audit rehearsal; continuous improvement loop.
✅ Pre-Engagement Checklist
- 📋 Process & app inventory with owners; SLOs, RTO/RPO targets.
- 🔐 Keys/secrets posture (KMS/HSM), break-glass accounts & vault.
- 🌐 Network/DNS/WAF plan; SD-WAN policy; Anycast use.
- 💾 Backup coverage & immutability scope; clean-point criteria; retention.
- ☁️ DR regions/sites; SaaS vendor continuity; third-party contacts.
- 🧪 Test schedule; evidence destinations (SIEM); report cadence.
- 🧾 Regulatory scope (PCI/HIPAA/SOX/NIST/etc.).
🔄 Where BCP/DR Fits (Recursive View)
1) Grammar — protected services ride /connectivity & /networks-and-data-centers.
2) Syntax — executed via /cloud patterns and /draas with private on-ramps.
3) Semantics — /cybersecurity preserves truth; /siem-soar proves it.
4) Pragmatics — /solveforce-ai predicts risk windows and suggests safe failover/failback.
5) Foundation — coherent terms via /primacy-of-language.
6) Map — indexed in the /solveforce-codex & /knowledge-hub.