Is That Backup Real?
How do you know your backups actually work, and what does a real backup strategy include beyond taking backups?
Practical scenario
A team has nightly automated backups with 7-day retention, in the same account as production, and a monitoring dashboard that is green. Nobody has ever restored one, and last month a bad migration was discovered nine days after it shipped.
What it tests
Answer it out loud first. The guide below stays closed until you ask for it, on purpose.
- Whether the candidate treats restore as the deliverable, not the backup
- Whether they consider isolation of backups from the compromised environment
- Whether they cover the failures backups exist for, not just infrastructure loss
Reading a strong answer is not the same as producing one. Commit to what you would say, then compare.