Topic starter
09/07/2026 5:53 pm
TL;DR: Cyberattacks and outages increasingly force organisations to recover not just data but applications, cloud infrastructure, and directory services, according to Commvault. That shifts resilience from backup coverage to restoration of identity-dependent systems, immutable copies, and repeatable recovery paths.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Commvault: “Don’t get conned. Get the fastest, most complete recovery.”.
Key questions
A: Security teams should assume the normal network will be unavailable and design recovery to work offline.
Q: What breaks when directory services are not included in recovery planning?
A: Applications can return with their data intact but still fail because authentication, authorization and trust relationships are missing.
Q: Why do cloud recoveries fail even when backups exist?
A: They fail when teams restore data without restoring the resource relationships and configuration state that make workloads functional.
Practitioner guidance
- Map identity dependencies into recovery scopes Identify which business services depend on directory services, service accounts, tokens and cloud permissions, then include those dependencies in recovery runbooks and testing.
- Test forest-level directory recovery separately Run dedicated recovery exercises for Active Directory or equivalent directory services so the team validates ordering, trust reconstruction and service reauthentication.
- Validate cloud dependency mapping before a restore event Confirm that cloud discovery and dependency mapping capture the configuration state needed to restore applications, not just the object or data layer.
Bottom line: Cyber resilience now depends on restoring the identity layer alongside applications and cloud infrastructure, not on data recovery alone.
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09/07/2026 5:54 pm
Identity recovery is now a core resilience control, not an auxiliary backup function. The article correctly shifts the frame from data protection to restoration of the systems that make data usable. That is especially important where Active Directory, cloud permissions and workload dependencies define whether a recovered environment can authenticate, authorize and operate. The practitioner implication is that resilience programmes must treat identity-state recovery as part of service continuity planning.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should organisations prioritise immutable copies or dependency mapping first?
A: Both matter, but dependency mapping often determines whether an immutable copy is actually usable. Clean recovery points reduce tampering risk, while accurate dependency data ensures the restored environment works. If the goal is business continuity, the sequence and trust model of the restore matter as much as the storage medium.
👉 Read our full editorial: Cyber resilience now depends on recovery of identities and apps