Recovery infrastructure is a high-value target because defeating it increases pressure on the victim. A backup program should be evaluated as a complete recovery path, not as a successful nightly job.
What the evidence supports
CISA’s ransomware guidance recommends identifying critical systems and dependencies, protecting storage against deletion or overwrite, maintaining offline or otherwise protected backups, and testing restoration. These are resilience practices, not a guarantee that every incident can be recovered instantly.
Why it matters to a Connecticut operator
Operators should define which systems must return first to restore safe, lawful business operations. Recovery priorities may include identity, POS, inventory workflows, communications, and the evidence needed to coordinate with vendors and counsel.
Operator checklist
- Document recovery order, owners, dependencies, and acceptable outage for critical services.
- Protect backup administration with separate credentials and strong MFA.
- Use deletion protection, object lock, offline copies, or equivalent controls appropriate to the platform.
- Run restoration exercises and record the time, problems, and remediation owner.