Minimum Viable Recovery: What Your Business Truly Can’t Function Without

Recovering everything after a cyber incident isn’t just challenging – it’s often impossible to do quickly. This is where the concept of minimum viable recovery (MVR) becomes essential: identifying and prioritizing the critical subset of business functions absolutely necessary to maintain operations during a crisis.

Why Traditional Recovery Approaches Fall Short

When organizations face cyberattacks, they often discover a disconnect between their technical recovery capabilities and actual business needs. According to Minimum Viable Recovery: Closing the Recovery Gap, a joint report from GigaOm and Commvault, 54% of enterprises lack confidence in their ability to recover from disruption or cyber attack despite significant investment in resilience infrastructure. This “recovery gap” exists largely because recovery planning is typically technology-led rather than business-driven.

Traditional recovery approaches often attempt to recover everything, which can lead to:

• Extended downtime for critical systems while less important systems are restored.
• Resource allocation that doesn’t align with business priorities.
• Recovery timelines that far exceed business tolerance for disruption.
• Technical teams making business-impact decisions without proper context.

Identifying Your Minimum Viable Business Functions

The first step in implementing an MVR approach is identifying the subset of business functions that are truly essential. This requires direct engagement with business leaders across the organization to determine:

• Critical revenue operations: Which functions directly generate revenue or prevent immediate revenue loss?
• Customer-facing services: Which customer touchpoints must remain operational to maintain trust?
• Regulatory requirements: Which systems contain data or functions with compliance obligations?
• Supply chain operations: Which systems are necessary to maintain inventory and delivery?
• Employee productivity: What minimum capabilities do employees need to perform essential functions?

According to the GigaOm report, organizations that take a business-led MVR approach can achieve the same level of risk mitigation as those pursuing comprehensive recovery – but faster and at lower cost. The key is proactive business engagement at a strategic level before an incident occurs.

Quantifying Business Impact: Beyond Technical Metrics

To effectively implement MVR, organizations need to move beyond purely technical metrics (like system downtime or recovery point objectives) to business-focused measurements:

• Revenue impact: Direct financial cost per hour of specific function downtime.
• Customer experience: Impact on customer ability to engage with your business.
• Operational capability: Percentage of normal business operations that can continue.
• Workforce productivity: The ability of employees to perform essential functions.
• Reputational risk: Potential long-term brand damage from extended outages.

Creating a Business-Driven MVR Framework

Building an effective MVR approach requires a structured methodology:

1. Business function mapping

Work with business stakeholders to document and map critical business processes, including:

• Primary business functions across departments.
• Dependencies between functions.
• Required systems and data for each function.
• Recovery time requirements from a business perspective.

2. Impact quantification

Assign business value and impact metrics to each function:

• Financial impact per hour of downtime.
• Customer impact assessment.
• Regulatory consequences.
• Seasonal or timing considerations that might affect priority.

3. System and data dependency mapping

Create technical dependency maps that connect business functions to underlying infrastructure:

• Application dependencies.
• Data requirements.
• Infrastructure components.
• Third-party service dependencies.

4. Recovery sequence design

Develop a tiered recovery sequence based on business priority:

• Tier 1: Immediate recovery requirements (minutes to hours).
• Tier 2: Secondary recovery priorities (hours to a day).
• Tier 3: Deferred recovery components (days+).
• Dependency-aware sequencing that restores prerequisites first.

5. Validation and testing

Create a testing methodology that validates business function restoration:

• Business process testing (not just technical recovery).
• Functional validation by business users.
• Regular review and updates to priority sequence.
• Tabletop exercises involving both IT and business leadership.

Implementation Roadmap

To implement MVR in your organization, consider this phased approach:

1. Discovery (Weeks 1–4)

• Conduct business impact analysis workshops.
• Document critical business functions.
• Map technical dependencies.
• Define MVR criteria and metrics.

2. Design (Weeks 5–8)

• Create recovery tiers based on business input.
• Develop recovery sequence documentation.
• Define validation requirements.
• Establish governance and decision-making framework.

3. Implementation (Weeks 9–16)

• Configure technology to support MVR approach.
• Develop runbooks and playbooks.
• Train technical and business teams.
• Establish ongoing review process.

4. Validation (Continuous)

• Conduct regular recovery testing.
• Perform tabletop exercises.
• Update priorities based on business changes.
• Refine technical capabilities to improve recovery metrics.

Key Takeaways

MVR represents a fundamental shift in how organizations approach cyber resilience:

• Recovery prioritization should be business-led, not technology-driven.
• Effective MVR requires cross-functional collaboration before an incident.
• Technical teams need clear business guidance on recovery priorities
• Regular testing and validation from a business perspective is essential

By focusing on what truly matters to your business, you can achieve more effective resilience with fewer resources, lower cost, and greater confidence in your ability to weather cyber disruptions.

Learn More

Watch our on-demand webinar “Closing the Recovery Gap: A Business-First Approach to Cyber Resilience” to learn about the three pillars of successful MVR implementation.

And check out these other blogs in our series on cyber resilience and minimum viability:

• The Urgent Need for Cyber Resilience
• Survey Says: Cyber Recovery is More Complicated Than Disaster Recovery
• Building Stakeholder Alignment for Cyber Resilience
• Recovery Testing: The Missing Piece in Most Cyber Resilience Programs