Almost every enterprise we review has backups. Far fewer have restored from them recently, under time pressure, in the order the business actually needs. Until that happens, downtime and data loss after an incident are guesses.
Agree the targets first
Recovery time objective (RTO) is how long a system can be down. Recovery point objective (RPO) is how much data you can afford to lose. Both are business decisions, set per system — and they decide the architecture, not the other way round.
Protect the layers around the backup
Identity: MFA, access control and least privilege, so an attacker can’t delete the backups along with production. Infrastructure: hardening, patching and vulnerability management. Network and data: segmentation, encryption and clear data residency. Backup: immutable copies that can’t be altered, and restore tests on a schedule.
Rehearse the failover
Run the restore end to end in a non-production environment, time it, and compare the result to the RTO and RPO you agreed. Write down what broke. Then do it again next quarter. The same evidence supports compliance work — SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and UU PDP where it applies.