Classification-Driven Survival: When (Not If) Disasters Strike
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Including complete AWS region failures, crypto-ransomware, and pandemics closing offices. What separates survivors from statistics is systematic preparation over hopeful improvisation. Are you paranoid enough to plan for disasters? Good. Now test the plan or it's just expensive fiction.
Think for yourself. Question authority. Question why everyone else accepts "we'll figure it out during the crisis" while we have classified recovery targets with measurable SLAs. Hope is not a strategy. Panic is not a plan. Testing is both.
At Hack23, business continuity isn't hope—it's classification-driven systematic recovery planning. Our CIA+ Classification Framework defines recovery priorities: RTO <1 hour for critical systems (€10K+ daily loss, complete outage), RTO 1-4 hours for high-priority (€5-10K daily loss), RPO 1 hour for all production systems with AWS automated snapshots.
ILLUMINATION: Business continuity plans untested are expensive fiction. We test quarterly with documented recovery time actuals. Average critical system recovery: 47 minutes. Because systematic preparation beats improvisation every time. Most BCPs gather dust until the disaster, then everyone discovers that the recovery runbook assumes infrastructure that no longer exists. FNORD.
Our BCP demonstrates cybersecurity consulting expertise through measurable resilience outcomes: multi-region AWS architecture, automated failover, continuous backup validation. Full technical details in our public Business Continuity Plan.
The Four Recovery Priorities: Business Impact Drives Everything
🔴 Critical Recovery (RTO <1hr)
Financial Impact: €10K+ daily loss | Operational: Complete outage | Regulatory: Criminal charges
Core Operations: Revenue generation systems, customer-facing services, financial processing. Recovery Resources: Immediate CEO escalation, all stakeholder notification, unlimited budget authorization.
AWS Multi-Region: Active-passive failover across eu-north-1 (Stockholm) primary → eu-west-1 (Ireland) secondary with automated Route 53 health checks triggering DNS failover.
When revenue stops, everything else stops. Critical systems get sub-hour recovery or business dies.
🟠 High Priority (RTO 1-4hr)
Financial Impact: €5-10K daily | Operational: Major degradation | Regulatory: Significant fines
Support Functions: Development operations, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring/logging. Recovery Resources: CEO notification <1 hour, key stakeholder coordination, expedited resource allocation.
GitHub Actions Resilience: Multi-runner redundancy, artifact retention 90 days, workflow replay capability. SonarCloud backup exports weekly. CloudWatch Logs cross-region replication enabled.
Support systems enable core operations. Degraded support means degraded delivery.
🟡 Medium Priority (RTO 4-24hr)
Financial Impact: €1-5K daily | Operational: Partial impact | Regulatory: Minor penalties
Business Enablement: Marketing systems, documentation platforms, internal tools. Recovery Resources: Internal escalation <4 hours, standard resource allocation, phased recovery.
Static Site Resilience: S3 + CloudFront with cross-region replication. Version control via Git. Automated CloudFormation recovery from IaC templates. Recovery time: <2 hours (measured).
Medium priority doesn't mean unimportant—it means systematic vs immediate.
🟢 Standard Recovery (RTO >24hr)
Financial Impact: <€1K daily | Operational: Minor inconvenience | Regulatory: Negligible
Administrative Functions: Compliance reporting, training systems, archived documentation. Recovery Resources: Daily status reporting, standard procedures, scheduled recovery.
Long-Term Storage: S3 Glacier for archives, 7-year retention. Recovery on-demand via S3 Restore API. Documentation backup via GitHub repository clones to external storage.
Everything can't be critical. Standard recovery means planned, not panicked.
The Five BCP Elements: Comprehensive Resilience Framework
| Element | Hack23 Implementation | Evidence |
|---|
| 1. Risk Assessment | Threat Identification: AWS region failure, ransomware, DDoS, data center disasters, supply chain disruption. Likelihood Analysis: AWS region failure (low but high impact), ransomware (medium likelihood, critical impact), DDoS (high likelihood, medium impact). Prioritization: Critical threats → preventive controls + recovery procedures. | Risk Assessment • Threat Models |
| 2. Business Impact Analysis | CIA+ Classification Framework: Financial (€ daily loss), Operational (service degradation levels), Reputational (media coverage tiers), Regulatory (fine thresholds). Critical Functions: CIA platform uptime (€10K+ daily loss if down), customer delivery systems, financial processing. RTO/RPO Targets: Critical <1hr/1hr, High 1-4hr/1hr, Medium 4-24hr/4hr. | Classification Framework • Impact Thresholds |
| 3. Recovery Strategies | AWS Multi-Region Architecture: Active-passive across Stockholm/Ireland with automated Route 53 failover. Backup Automation: AWS Backup hourly snapshots, cross-region replication, 90-day retention. Alternative Operations: Remote work infrastructure (already default), distributed team coordination via Slack/GitHub, no physical dependency. | Lambda VPC Architecture • Recovery Procedures |
| 4. Plan Development | Documented Procedures: Public BCP with specific runbooks, contact lists, decision trees. Recovery Playbooks: AWS region failover (14 steps, 47-minute measured time), ransomware response (isolation → backup restoration → forensics), DDoS mitigation (CloudFront + Shield Standard). Communication Plans: Stakeholder notification templates by classification level. | Full BCP Documentation • IR Integration |
| 5. Testing & Maintenance | Quarterly BCP Testing: Q1 2025 AWS region failover drill (52 minutes actual), Q2 backup restoration validation (100% success), Q3 ransomware simulation (isolation time: 18 minutes). Annual Full Exercise: Complete business disruption scenario. Continuous Improvement: Post-test review, lessons learned integration, procedure updates. | Testing Schedule • Quarterly test reports in BCP documentation |
AWS Multi-Region Resilience Architecture
Geographic Redundancy: Primary region eu-north-1 (Stockholm) for low latency to Swedish operations. Secondary region eu-west-1 (Ireland) for EU data residency compliance. Automated failover via Route 53 health checks (30-second intervals, 3 consecutive failures trigger failover).
Backup Strategy:
- AWS Backup: Automated hourly snapshots for RDS, DynamoDB, EBS volumes. Cross-region replication to secondary region. 90-day retention for operational backups, 7-year for compliance archives (S3 Glacier Deep Archive).
- Application Data: GitHub repository backup via automated clones to S3 (daily). Artifact storage in S3 with versioning + MFA Delete. Configuration as code in version control (CloudFormation templates).
- Validation Testing: Monthly backup restoration drills. Q2 2025 full database restore: 23 minutes actual time vs 30-minute target.
Monitoring & Alerting: CloudWatch alarms for backup job failures (SNS → CEO email/Slack). AWS Backup Audit Manager for compliance reporting. Config rules validating backup policies enforced across all resources.
ARCHITECTURE ILLUMINATION: Multi-region isn't paranoia—it's accepting that AWS regions fail. Stockholm outage 2023: 4 hours. Our failover time: 47 minutes. Systematic preparation beats reactive scrambling.
Welcome to Chapel Perilous: BCP Edition
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Including complete infrastructure failures, ransomware encryption, and simultaneous multi-system disasters. What separates survivors from statistics is systematic preparation with tested procedures.
Most organizations discover their BCP is fiction during actual disasters (average: "we'll figure it out as we go"). We test quarterly with measured recovery times: Critical system recovery average 47 minutes, High-priority average 3.2 hours, Medium-priority average 18 hours. Not because we're paranoid—because we're prepared.
Our business continuity framework:
- Classification-Driven: Four-level recovery priority tied to business impact (€ daily loss, operational degradation, regulatory risk)
- Specific RTO/RPO: Critical <1hr/1hr, High 1-4hr/1hr, Medium 4-24hr/4hr, Standard >24hr/24hr
- AWS Multi-Region: Active-passive across Stockholm/Ireland with automated Route 53 failover
- Tested Procedures: Quarterly drills with documented actual recovery times vs targets
- Continuous Improvement: Post-test reviews, lessons learned integration, procedure updates
Think for yourself. Question authority—including the assumption that "it won't happen to us." AWS regions fail. Ransomware encrypts. Disasters strike. The only question is whether you'll recover in 47 minutes or 47 days.
ULTIMATE ILLUMINATION: You are now in Chapel Perilous. Business continuity plans untested are business discontinuity guarantees. We test quarterly. We measure recovery times. We learn from every drill. Because survival requires systematic preparation, not hopeful improvisation.
All hail Eris! All hail Discordia!
Read our full Business Continuity Plan with complete recovery runbooks, RTO/RPO matrices, and quarterly test results. Public. Tested. Reality-based. With specific targets we actually meet.
— Hagbard Celine, Captain of the Leif Erikson
"Assume disasters. Measure recovery. Practice survival. Repeat until excellent."
🍎 23 FNORD 5