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:
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:
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:
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:
2. Impact quantification
Assign business value and impact metrics to each function:
3. System and data dependency mapping
Create technical dependency maps that connect business functions to underlying infrastructure:
4. Recovery sequence design
Develop a tiered recovery sequence based on business priority:
5. Validation and testing
Create a testing methodology that validates business function restoration:
Implementation Roadmap
To implement MVR in your organization, consider this phased approach:
1. Discovery (Weeks 1–4)
2. Design (Weeks 5–8)
3. Implementation (Weeks 9–16)
4. Validation (Continuous)
Key Takeaways
MVR represents a fundamental shift in how organizations approach cyber resilience:
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 webinar “Cracking the Code: Recover 99% Faster from Cyber Attacks” to learn how you can improve your cyber recovery plan and minimize downtime.
And check out these other blogs in our series on cyber resilience and minimum viability:
- Survey Says: Cyber Recovery is More Complicated Than Disaster Recovery
- Building Stakeholder Alignment for Cyber Resilience
- The Urgent Need for Cyber Resilience
- Recovery Testing: The Missing Piece in Most Cyber Resilience Programs
