Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Policy
A comprehensive policy ensuring data integrity, backup procedures, and recovery protocols for corporate operations. Establishes minimum frequencies, responsibilities, and validation steps to protect critical business data.
This policy defines the mandatory procedures for backing up corporate data and restoring systems in the event of data loss, corruption, or disaster. It applies to all servers, workstations, cloud applications, and critical databases. The goal is to achieve a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of no more than 24 hours and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 48 hours for critical systems.
This policy applies to all departments and business units within the organization. It covers all data owned, processed, or stored by the enterprise, including file servers, email systems, ERP databases, customer records, and cloud-hosted platforms. All employees with access to enterprise data are subject to the backup and recovery requirements outlined herein.
- Full backups of all critical systems must be completed every 24 hours. Incremental backups may be used between full cycles.
- At least one copy of the backup must be stored offsite (physically separate location or cloud region) to protect against site-level disasters.
- All backup data must be encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+). Encryption keys must be managed separately from backup storage.
- Full recovery drills must be performed at least once per quarter. Partial restore tests of randomly selected files must occur monthly.
- Backup retention periods: daily backups retained for 30 days, weekly backups for 12 months, monthly backups for 7 years to meet regulatory requirements.
- IT Administrator – Executes daily backups, monitors job status, manages offsite replication, and initiates recovery procedures during incidents.
- Department Heads – Identify critical data within their departments, notify IT of new systems requiring backup, and assign a backup liaison.
- Compliance Officer – Audits backup logs, verifies retention policies, and ensures adherence to regulatory frameworks (e.g., PIPEDA, GDPR).
- All Employees – Must not bypass encryption or delete backup files; report any backup failures or data anomalies immediately.