Purpose

This standard establishes requirements for resilience, recoverability, operational continuity, backup, restoration, and recovery capabilities for University-managed technology solutions.

The standard defines the controls necessary to ensure workloads can withstand failures, recover from disruptions, restore services and data, and support ongoing business, academic, research, and operational functions.

Scope

This standard applies to:

• Applications
• Databases
• Data platforms
• Infrastructure services
• Cloud services
• Platform services
• Software-as-a-Service solutions
• Integration services
• Shared services
• Backup services
• Recovery services
• University-managed technology environments

Resilience Principles

Resilience by Design

Resilience and recovery requirements shall be incorporated into solution design rather than added after deployment.

Failure Assumption

Technology solutions should assume failures will occur and shall support recovery without unacceptable operational impact.

Recoverability

Services, applications, configurations, and data shall be recoverable following failures, service disruptions, accidental deletion, corruption, or disaster events as required by approved recovery objectives.

Operational Continuity

Technology solutions should support continued operations during disruptions when practical and appropriate to business and operational requirements.

Recovery Validation

Recovery capabilities shall be periodically validated to ensure recovery objectives remain achievable as technology, workloads, data, dependencies, and business requirements evolve.

Operational Sustainability

Recovery architectures should use supportable, maintainable, repeatable, and appropriately automated approaches that can be consistently operated throughout the workload lifecycle.

Resilience Requirements

Technology solutions shall implement resilience and recovery capabilities appropriate to:

• Workload classification
• Data classification
• Business criticality
• Operational requirements
• Recovery objectives
• Technology dependencies
• Regulatory and contractual obligations

Resilience requirements shall address the complete workload, including applications, data, infrastructure, integrations, identity dependencies, monitoring dependencies, and supporting services.

Resilience Architecture Components

Resilience capabilities may include:

• Availability services
• Backup services
• Recovery services
• Restoration services
• Replication services
• Monitoring and alerting services
• Operational continuity capabilities

Implemented capabilities shall align with workload requirements, recovery objectives, operational requirements, applicable obligations, and approved architecture patterns.

Recovery Objectives

Technology solutions shall establish documented recovery objectives appropriate to:

• Workload classification
• Data classification
• Business requirements
• Business criticality
• Operational requirements
• Technology dependencies
• Regulatory and contractual obligations

Recovery objectives shall define the business and operational expectations that recovery capabilities must support.

Recovery objectives shall be reviewed when:

• Business requirements materially change
• Business criticality materially changes
• Workload classification changes
• Data classification changes
• Regulatory or contractual obligations change
• The workload architecture materially changes
• Critical technology or service dependencies change
• Recovery validation identifies a material gap

Availability Requirements

Technology solutions shall implement availability capabilities appropriate to their business criticality, operational requirements, and approved recovery objectives.

Availability capabilities may include:

• Component redundancy
• Service redundancy
• Failure isolation
• Automated health detection
• Failover capabilities
• Degraded operating modes

Availability capabilities shall not be treated as a replacement for backup, restoration, or recovery capabilities.

Backup Requirements

Technology solutions shall implement backup capabilities appropriate to workload requirements, data protection requirements, operational objectives, and approved recovery objectives.

Backup capabilities should support:

• Data recovery
• Application recovery
• Configuration recovery
• Restoration activities
• Protection from accidental deletion
• Protection from corruption
• Operational continuity

Backup data shall be protected according to the classification, retention, access, encryption, and security requirements applicable to the source data.

Backup capabilities shall be monitored and periodically validated to confirm that protected data and configurations can be restored.

Recovery Requirements

Technology solutions shall implement recovery capabilities sufficient to support restoration of workloads, services, applications, platforms, configurations, and data.

Recovery planning shall address applicable scenarios, including:

• Data loss
• Accidental deletion
• Data corruption
• Component failure
• Infrastructure failure
• Application failure
• Platform failure
• Integration failure
• Service interruption
• Loss of a supporting dependency
• Cybersecurity events affecting availability or integrity
• Disaster events

Restoration Requirements

Recovery procedures shall support:

• Workload restoration
• Service restoration
• Data restoration
• Application recovery
• Platform recovery
• Configuration recovery
• Integration recovery
• Dependency validation
• Validation of recovered services and data
• Operational resumption

Restoration procedures shall identify the activities necessary to return the workload to an approved operational state.

Recovery Procedures

Recovery procedures shall be documented and maintained for workloads requiring formal recovery capabilities.

Recovery procedures should identify:

• Recovery prerequisites
• Recovery dependencies
• Required roles and responsibilities
• Restoration activities
• Validation activities
• Operational resumption activities
• Escalation and communication requirements

Recovery documentation shall be reviewed when material changes are made to the workload, its dependencies, or its recovery architecture.

Recovery Validation

Recovery capabilities shall be periodically reviewed and validated through approved operational processes.

Validation activities may include:

• Backup validation
• Recovery testing
• Restoration testing
• Failover testing
• Recovery procedure reviews
• Dependency validation
• Operational readiness reviews

Recovery validation shall evaluate whether recovery capabilities, procedures, ownership assignments, and dependencies support the approved recovery objectives.

Material issues identified during validation shall be documented, assigned ownership, and addressed through approved governance, operational, or risk-management processes.

Operational Continuity

Technology solutions shall maintain operational continuity capabilities appropriate to workload classification, business criticality, and operational requirements.

Operational continuity planning should consider:

• Critical business processes
• Applications and services
• Data dependencies
• Identity dependencies
• Network dependencies
• Infrastructure dependencies
• Integration dependencies
• Shared service dependencies
• External service dependencies
• Monitoring and management dependencies

Operational continuity capabilities should support continued or degraded operations during disruptions when required by business and operational objectives.

Dependency Resilience

Workload recovery planning shall identify services and capabilities required to restore or continue workload operations.

Dependency planning should address:

• Enterprise identity services
• Authorization services
• Network and connectivity services
• Monitoring and alerting services
• Data services
• Integration services
• Shared platform services
• External providers and services

Recovery designs shall account for dependencies that could prevent restoration or operational resumption.

Monitoring Integration

Resilience and recovery capabilities shall integrate with approved monitoring, logging, and alerting capabilities.

Monitoring shall support:

• Service health visibility
• Backup status visibility
• Replication status visibility
• Failure detection
• Recovery operations
• Restoration activities
• Recovery validation
• Operational investigation
• Incident response

Monitoring capabilities required during recovery shall remain available or have an approved alternative sufficient to support recovery operations.

Data Protection Alignment

Recovery and resilience capabilities shall align with applicable data classification and data protection requirements.

Recovery implementations shall support:

• Confidentiality
• Integrity
• Availability
• Accountability
• Recoverability

Backup, replicated, restored, and recovered data shall remain subject to applicable access, encryption, retention, monitoring, and disposal requirements.

Shared Recovery Services

Backup, recovery, restoration, replication, monitoring, and resilience capabilities may operate as approved enterprise shared services when governance, security, operational, and compliance requirements are satisfied.

Shared recovery services shall support:

• Recovery operations
• Recovery validation
• Operational accountability
• Monitoring integration
• Data protection requirements
• Governance requirements
• Workload recovery objectives

Consumption of shared recovery services does not remove workload ownership, workload accountability, data protection, or recovery validation responsibilities.

Workload Classification Alignment

Innovation Workloads

Innovation Workloads shall implement resilience and recovery capabilities appropriate to experimentation, data protection, ownership accountability, and operational support requirements.

Limited recovery commitments shall be documented when an Innovation Workload does not require formal backup, restoration, or continuity capabilities.

Enterprise Workloads

Enterprise Workloads shall implement availability, backup, recovery, restoration, monitoring, and operational continuity capabilities appropriate to enterprise business requirements and approved recovery objectives.

Regulated Workloads

Regulated Workloads shall implement enhanced recovery, resilience, continuity, validation, monitoring, governance, and compliance requirements appropriate to the applicable regulatory, contractual, institutional, or research obligations.

Regulated Workloads shall use approved recovery architectures and shall complete formal recovery validation activities appropriate to their requirements.

Operational Responsibilities

Business Owners

Business owners are responsible for:

• Defining business recovery expectations
• Identifying critical business functions
• Supporting recovery objective decisions
• Participating in recovery validation activities
• Supporting operational continuity planning
• Supporting governance and readiness reviews

Technical Owners

Technical owners are responsible for:

• Designing and implementing workload recovery capabilities
• Documenting technical dependencies
• Maintaining recovery procedures
• Supporting backup and restoration activities
• Participating in recovery validation
• Addressing identified recovery gaps

Operational and Support Teams

Operational and support teams are responsible for:

• Operating approved resilience and recovery capabilities
• Responding to monitoring and recovery alerts
• Supporting recovery operations
• Maintaining applicable operational procedures
• Participating in recovery validation activities

Platform and Shared Service Teams

Platform and shared service teams are responsible for:

• Providing approved backup services
• Providing approved recovery and restoration capabilities
• Providing platform resilience capabilities
• Supporting monitoring integration
• Supporting service onboarding
• Supporting recovery operations
• Maintaining shared service recovery capabilities

Lifecycle Management

Resilience and recovery requirements shall be managed throughout the workload lifecycle.

Lifecycle activities shall include:

• Establishing recovery requirements during planning and design
• Implementing approved resilience and recovery capabilities
• Maintaining backup and recovery configurations
• Updating recovery procedures following material changes
• Reviewing recovery objectives when requirements change
• Validating recovery capabilities periodically
• Retiring backup and recovery capabilities through approved processes
• Managing retained data according to applicable requirements

Governance Reviews

Resilience and recovery capabilities shall support periodic governance reviews sufficient to evaluate:

• Recovery readiness
• Recovery objective alignment
• Recovery validation status
• Operational sustainability
• Business alignment
• Data protection alignment
• Compliance alignment
• Ownership and accountability
• Known recovery gaps and risks

Review activities may include recovery documentation reviews, recovery validation reviews, architecture reviews, operational readiness reviews, and compliance reviews.

Architecture Review

Architecture review is required when:

• A Regulated Workload is introduced
• A workload requires enhanced recovery or continuity capabilities
• Recovery objectives materially change
• The recovery architecture materially changes
• A critical dependency materially changes
• Recovery capabilities deviate from approved standards or patterns
• Recovery validation identifies a material architectural gap

Exceptions

Exceptions to this standard require documented approval through the approved architecture exception process.

Exceptions shall identify the affected recovery requirement, business justification, associated risk, compensating controls, accountable owner, and applicable review requirements.