Ransomware Backup and Recovery Review for SMEs
A successful backup job is not the same as a recoverable business. The review must prove that clean data and systems can be restored within an acceptable time.
Questions to answer first
- Which applications, databases, file stores, configurations, and identity systems must be recovered?
- Can compromised administrator credentials delete or encrypt every backup copy?
- How much data can the business afford to lose, and how long can each service be unavailable?
- When was a full restore last tested, by whom, and what failed?
- Who decides recovery order and communicates with staff, customers, vendors, and authorities?
A practical review sequence
Map critical services
Connect business processes to the systems, data, identities, suppliers, and infrastructure required for recovery.
Review backup separation
Check that retention, immutability or offline copies, access boundaries, encryption, and monitoring reduce a common-mode failure.
Test restoration
Restore representative data and an application in an isolated environment, then measure time and document missing dependencies.
Rehearse priorities
Agree who leads, which services return first, what evidence is preserved, and how temporary workarounds operate.
Red flags
- Backup administration uses the same credentials as production
- Only files are backed up while application configuration is omitted
- Restore tests stop after confirming that an archive can be opened
- Recovery time assumptions have never been measured
- No one owns the recovery runbook
Useful output
A prioritised recovery gap list, test evidence, target recovery sequence, and maintainable remediation actions.
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