Practical steps you can start using today to build recovery confidence and get compliant.
In a recent blog, we looked at how regulations like NIS2, DORA and FISMA are changing the game for backup and recovery.
You can read it here:
Regulations Crash the Party
The response to the article has been huge. We’ve been receiving a lot of questions asking for more detail. Unsurprisingly, regulatory compliance seems to be high on the list of priorities when it comes to the challenges our readers are facing right now.
At Predatar, we like to give the people what they want. So, in this blog we’re digging deeper into the topic. We’re moving from the ‘why’ to the ‘how,’ to give you practical advice that will help you prove you can recover effectively – giving you recovery confidence and helping you achieve compliance.
Here’s a practical playbook based on 7 steps you can start using right away.
#1. Know your obligations
Begin by understanding exactly which regulations apply to you. This might be direct (because you operate in a regulated sector) or indirect (because you are part of the supply chain for a regulated customer). Write the requirements down, highlight the parts that relate specifically to recovery, and make sure your leadership team and IT teams are looking at the same information.
#2. Define what “acceptable” downtime looks like
Your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) should never be a guess. It should reflect the real cost of downtime in your business. Calculate what an outage of critical IT systems will cost your business per hour and multiply this by how many hours a full recovery will take. Is the total acceptable? Can your business tolerate the impact? If not, you’ve got important work to do.
To give some context, The True Cost of Downtime in 2025 Report by Erwood Group has found that for 90% of medium-sized enterprises, the cost of IT downtime is greater than $300,000 (USD) per hour.
#3. Test your backups every single day
It’s not enough to run a quick restore in a safe lab environment once a year or carry out the occasional data centre failover test. The threats you’re facing today don’t wait for annual tests. Modern ransomware and the reconnaissance tools attackers are using are designed to evade primary security tools without detection. By the time an attack is launched, the malware has probably burrowed deep inside your backups.
We know this because Predatar has found hidden malware in the backups of 86% of our customers. If you’re only testing infrequently, you’re giving the attackers a head start. Testing daily means you can catch and remove malicious code before it has a chance to cause real damage, and you can be confident that your recovery point is both safe and ready to go when you need it.
#4. Check the health of your backups
Before you recover anything, be certain it’s clean. This means scanning for dormant malware and confirming the integrity of the data before it re-enters your production environment.
#5. Automate the evidence
Most regulations don’t just want you to be compliant, they want you to prove it. Automate the collection of logs, test results and recovery reports so that when the auditors ask for proof, you can provide it immediately.
#6. Close the gaps quickly
If a test shows you are not meeting your RTO, or if your backups fail a malware scan, treat it as an opportunity to improve. It is far better to find and fix weaknesses during a test, rather than in a real crisis.
#7. Make it part of your routine
Recovery testing should be part of your regular operational rhythm. Daily testing ensures your team is always ready, and your documentation is always accurate and up to date. Thanks to automation and AI, daily recovery testing and reporting is now easy to achieve.
Why this matters now
Whether it’s NIS2 in Europe, DORA in financial services, or FISMA in the US, the message is the same. You must be able to recover quickly, cleanly, and with proof.
Following this playbook is not just about passing compliance checks. It is about building true resilience. It’s the confidence that when the worst happens, you can get back to business without the drama.
What next?
The Predatar Recovery Assurance platform can do a lot of the heavy lifting. From fully automated recovery testing and malware scanning to automated evidence reporting, Predatar makes it simple to be ready and to prove it.
Watch this short explainer video [90 seconds] to learn more, or visit predatar.com to book a demo.
