7	Disaster recovery and business continuity management
Database systems hold critical data of Government institutions and are core to performance and availability of government software systems used to delivery services and automate government processes. It is therefore critical to ensure their continued availability by putting in place suitable disaster recovery and business continuity processes. The following guidelines apply to disaster recovery and business continuity management: 

Data backup and recovery strategy process [Mandatory]
Develop a backup and recovery strategy to prevent data loss in case of hardware failures, errors or disasters 

 Specify the acceptable data loss in case of a disruption. This determines how frequently backups need to be taken to minimize data loss 

 Determine recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) for each database. These define the acceptable downtime and data loss limits 

 Implement regular and consistent database backups. Use full, differential, and incremental backup strategies based on your RPO and RTO requirements 

 Periodically simulate recovery scenarios to ensure that your recovery plan is accurate and effective. Test various scenarios, including partial and complete failures 

 Conduct a full recovery test where you simulate a complete system or data loss and use your backups to restore everything. This tests the entire recovery process from start to finish