The Device 

Traditional disaster recovery starts with a basic assumption: data is trusted, the environment is unavailable, and the goal is to restore operations as quickly as possible. The premise of cyber recovery, however, is a bit different, and a lot more uncomfortable. If an attacker has compromised the environment, the recovery path needs to be isolated, hardened, and validated before anything comes back online. 

The board of this medical device and healthcare company had begun shifting its priorities from disaster recovery to cyber recovery. The goal was to understand its existing backup environment and use that as a starting point to build a practical plan toward long-term resilience. 

The Desired State 

The client already had backup solutions in place. What it needed to know was whether those solutions could support safe recovery after a cyber event. 

A Strategic Shift. Cyber recovery isn’t just about restoring data after an outage. The client wanted to plan for situations in which the recovery environment itself was exposed to risk. 

Five Different Platforms. While multiple platforms provide flexibility, they also make it harder to connect the pieces and get the full recovery picture. The client needed to understand how each platform would fit within its new cyber recovery strategy. 

Resilience Without Replacement. Like the five platforms, the client also wanted to understand how the rest of its current investments might contribute to a more resilient design, rather than starting from scratch. 

Hardening the current environment was an important starting point, but it was only the first step in a much bigger, more involved conversation. The client’s goal was a multi-year plan that could sequence the work and guide its maturity for a comprehensive cyber recovery program. 

A Better Blueprint 

This engagement aligned with two areas of AHEAD’s expertise. 

• Secure & Resilient Architectures: Evaluating the company’s existing backup environment, implementing hardening measures, and developing a more resilient design. 
• Operational Excellence: Translating the current state review into a multi-year roadmap for building and operationalizing comprehensive cyber recovery. 

The work unfolded across three phases: 

Advise 

AHEAD and the client started with the five backup platforms already in place. With each platform, the teams assessed current recovery capabilities, identified risks, and determined how each platform could support the new cyber recovery priorities. This helped the client understand how all the pieces would work together during a cyber event, and how the design would hold up when trust in the production environment didn’t. 

Why the Groundwork Mattered: This gave the client a realistic picture of its working environment. It also gave the client a way to connect its shifting strategy to the technical realities of the new recovery environment it was aiming for. 

Build 

With the blueprint decided, AHEAD began implementing hardening measures across the existing environment, so the client could improve its resilience and protect recovery data. The initial platform review meant the design built off existing hardware investments. The client could improve resilience without treating its current infrastructure as a sunk cost or replacing it wholesale. 

How It Came to Life: By connecting immediate improvements to the longer-term strategy, the client could address current risks while building a comprehensive cyber recovery program. 

Run 

AHEAD then developed a multi-year roadmap for the client’s future cyber recovery strategy. This gave the client a practical sequence for moving from its resilient backup environment toward a broader cyber recovery program. 

How It Kept Delivering: Cyber recovery isn’t a one-and-done solution. It works best as an intentional, carefully designed program that evolves with the client’s changing systems, risks, and recovery expectations.  

Ready to Launch 

The client now has a structured framework for comprehensive cyber recovery. 

Resilient Design. The hardening measures and improved recovery design created the conditions for additional cyber recovery capabilities to be added over time. 

More Bang for the Buck. By leveraging existing hardware, the company could improve resilience and keep modernizing without having to start over. 

Room to Grow. The improved recovery environment gives the client greater confidence to proceed as it builds out the rest of its cyber recovery program. 

What’s Next 

The client is continuing to formalize the new program, strengthen the operational model, and validate that the recovery environment can support the business even when things go wrong. 

This work starts with technology, but it succeeds through repeatable processes and clear ownership that determines what can be recovered and how. AHEAD helps organizations move from simply knowing backup exists to knowing that critical operations can recover after a cyber event.