Backup Policy
Document Owner: CISO Effective Date: 01/01/2026 Review Cycle: Annual (or upon major architectural change) Applies To: All production systems, cloud infrastructure, databases, and critical business data supporting the product.
1. Purpose
The purpose of this policy is to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of organizational and customer data by defining requirements for data backup, retention, restoration, and testing.
This policy supports:
Business continuity
Incident response readiness
Ransomware resilience
Regulatory and contractual compliance
2. Scope
This policy applies to:
Production environments
Databases (ERM, ARA, TPRM, SA, PMS, etc.)
Application configurations
Customer-uploaded content
Audit logs and system logs
Infrastructure-as-Code configurations
Critical internal documentation and knowledge bases
3. Backup Objectives
The organization defines the following recovery objectives:
Production Databases
≤ 24 hours
≤ 8 hours
Critical Platform Services
≤ 24 hours
≤ 12 hours
Logs & Audit Trails
≤ 24 hours
≤ 24 hours
Internal Documentation
≤ 48 hours
≤ 24 hours
RPO and RTO are reviewed annually by the CISO and Engineering leadership.
4. Backup Strategy
4.1 Backup Types
The platform shall implement:
Daily automated incremental backups
Weekly full backups
Continuous database replication (where applicable)
Immutable backup storage (where supported by provider)
Backups must be automated and monitored.
4.2 Backup Coverage
Backups must include:
Customer data
Risk registers (ERM data)
Vendor risk records (TPRM)
Policy acknowledgment records (PMS)
Threat intelligence data (where contractually required)
Application configurations
Encryption keys (secured separately)
Infrastructure templates (IaC)
5. Backup Storage Requirements
Backups must:
Be encrypted at rest (AES-256 or cloud provider equivalent)
Be encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2+)
Be stored in geographically separate locations
Be protected by strict access control (least privilege)
Use multi-factor authentication for administrative access
Be logically segregated from production accounts (where possible)
At least one backup copy must be protected from ransomware via immutability or write-once-read-many (WORM) mechanisms.
6. Retention Policy
Daily Backups
30 days
Weekly Backups
12 weeks
Monthly Snapshots
12 months
Audit Logs (if required by regulation)
According to regulatory requirement
Retention requirements may be extended based on:
Customer contracts
Regulatory mandates
Ongoing investigations
Legal hold requirements
7. Backup Monitoring
Backup jobs must be monitored automatically.
Failed backup jobs trigger alerts to Engineering and Security.
Critical failures must be escalated within 4 hours.
Backup integrity must be verified via automated checksum validation.
Backup status should be visible in operational dashboards (DRI module alignment).
8. Restoration Testing
To ensure recoverability:
Restore testing must occur at least quarterly
Test results must be documented
Randomized restore validation must include:
Database recovery
Full environment restore (at least annually)
Configuration integrity validation
Testing results shall be reported to the CISO and included in ERM risk tracking if failures occur.
9. Access Control
Access to backups is restricted to:
Authorized DevOps personnel
Security team members (as required)
Incident response team during events
All access must:
Be logged
Be reviewed periodically
Require MFA
10. Incident Integration
In the event of:
Ransomware
Data corruption
Infrastructure compromise
Cloud provider outage
The Incident Response Assistance (IRA) process shall determine:
Whether restoration is required
Which recovery point is safest
Root cause validation prior to restore
Post-incident, backup effectiveness shall be reviewed.
11. Third-Party Backup Providers
If backup services are provided by third-party cloud vendors:
Vendor risk must be assessed via TPRM
SLA availability must align with defined RTO
Encryption standards must meet company policy
Certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2, etc.) must be validated
12. Compliance Alignment
This policy aligns with:
ISO 27001 Annex A (Backup Controls)
SOC 2 CC7 / CC9
NIST CSF (PR.IP-4, PR.DS-1)
GDPR (Data Integrity & Availability)
13. Policy Violations
Failure to comply with this policy may:
Increase organizational risk
Trigger ERM risk registration
Result in disciplinary action
14. Review and Approval
This policy shall be reviewed annually or upon:
Major infrastructure change
New product module launch
Regulatory requirement update
Post-incident review findings
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