Backup and recovery: what isn't tested doesn't exist

Two numbers

How far back you may lose data, and how long recovery may take. Both are set with the business side and not the infrastructure team, because they're a decision about risk and cost.

What a healthy backup looks like

Automatic, encrypted, in copies in several locations, and outside the account that can be deleted along with the system. A backup accessible with the same permissions as production isn't protection against malicious deletion.

Including what people forget: configuration, secrets, file storage, and dashboards.

A recovery drill

Once a quarter, restore to a separate environment and measure how long it took and what was missing. Something almost always turns up — a permission, an order, a dependency. Better to find it in a drill.