Lion Cipher Lab
Check backup coverage against RPO and restore tests
- Cyber / Security Engineer
- Intermediate
- ~40 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
Backups are the last line of defence against ransomware, hardware failure and mistakes, and they are usually reported with a single number: the share of backup jobs that succeeded last night. That number answers the wrong question. It cannot see a system that has no backup job at all. It cannot see a job that succeeds every night but can never meet the system's recovery point objective (RPO), the maximum data loss the business accepts. And it cannot see a backup that has never been restored, or whose last restore test failed. NIST SP 800-34, the contingency planning guide, treats backup and…
What you'll learn
- the difference between job success and asset protection
- recovery point objective (RPO) and what a backup schedule can meet
- why untested backups are not yet backups
- reconciling assets, backup jobs and restore tests
- restore-test freshness by tier
- spotting backup jobs for unknown hosts
- reporting backup posture honestly
Steps in this lab
- Three questions per asset
- The three lists
- Write the coverage check
- Run it: 75 percent of jobs, one asset in eight
- Fix in tier order, and report the asset view