The need for a disaster recovery strategy is no longer in question. The real challenge is determining how critical systems can be restored after an outage, cyberattack, infrastructure failure, or physical disaster - and how much downtime and data loss the organization can tolerate.

Traditional disaster recovery usually requires a second location with servers, storage, networking, security systems, and software licenses. This secondary infrastructure must remain synchronized with production, receive regular updates, maintain enough capacity, and be tested continuously.

Zero Trust entered the enterprise security agenda primarily through identity, device, and network controls. The principle of “never trust by default and always verify” has been implemented through multi-factor authentication, least-privilege access, microsegmentation, privileged access management, and context-aware security policies. However, one critical layer remains outside many Zero Trust programs: the data itself, and particularly the backup infrastructure that represents the organization’s final recovery option.

“We have a backup system” is often treated as a sufficient answer to data loss risk. However, the real cost of data loss is not limited to the technical value of lost files, deleted records, corrupted databases, or inaccessible systems. When data loss occurs, the real bill is created by a combination of operational downtime, lost revenue, customer churn, regulatory exposure, legal costs, reputational damage, recovery expenses, employee productivity loss, insurance impact, and crisis management efforts.

Most organizations connect to cloud services over the public internet. To access a resource on AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or another cloud provider, traffic leaves the company office, data center, or branch location, enters the internet service provider’s network, passes through several transit points, and finally reaches the cloud provider’s network. This connectivity model can be sufficient for many standard workloads. However, it is not always enough. For critical applications, large-scale data transfers, hybrid cloud architectures, financial transaction systems, backup replication, AI/ML data pipelines, and regulated workloads, the variable performance of the public internet can become a limitation in terms of security, latency, reliability, and cost.

Backup strategy is often treated as a secondary infrastructure topic until an organization experiences data loss, a system outage, or a ransomware attack. However, backup is not simply about keeping a copy of files. It is a critical layer that directly affects business continuity, data integrity, cyber resilience, and regulatory compliance. Buying backup software, planning storage capacity, defining retention policies, monitoring backup jobs, troubleshooting failed backups, testing restores, and keeping the system operational 24/7 requires continuous operational effort. For many IT teams, this workload is difficult to sustain alongside daily infrastructure responsibilities.