<!-- FedRAMP CP-9/10 | SOC 2 A1.x | ISO 42001 Support -->
# Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Plan (BCP/DRP) — Template

> **Instructions**: Replace all `<placeholder>` values with your organization's actual data.
> Remove this instruction block before finalizing.

---

## 1. Objectives

- Maintain or restore critical services to meet defined SLOs during disruptive events.
- Ensure data protection and integrity through backup and recovery procedures.
- Meet contractual and regulatory obligations for service availability.

---

## 2. RTO / RPO Targets

| Service Tier | RTO (Recovery Time) | RPO (Recovery Point) | Examples |
|-------------|---------------------|----------------------|----------|
| **Tier 1 (Critical)** | `< 1 hour` | `< 15 min` | `<Production API, primary database, authentication>` |
| **Tier 2 (Important)** | `< 4 hours` | `< 1 hour` | `<Background workers, analytics pipeline, AI inference>` |
| **Tier 3 (Standard)** | `< 24 hours` | `< 24 hours` | `<Internal tools, development environments, reporting>` |
| **Tier 4 (Deferrable)** | `< 72 hours` | `< 72 hours` | `<Marketing site, non-critical batch jobs>` |

---

## 3. Disaster Scenarios

| Scenario | Likelihood | Impact | Recovery Strategy |
|----------|-----------|--------|-------------------|
| **Cloud region outage** | Low | Critical | Failover to secondary region; DNS update |
| **Availability zone failure** | Medium | High | Multi-AZ auto-recovery; load balancer reroute |
| **Data corruption / deletion** | Low | Critical | Restore from point-in-time backup |
| **Ransomware / security breach** | Low | Critical | Isolate; restore from clean backup (see IRP.md) |
| **Key vendor failure** | Medium | High | Activate alternative vendor; degrade gracefully |
| **DNS / certificate failure** | Low | High | Switch DNS provider; deploy backup certificates |
| **AI model failure / drift** | Medium | Medium | Revert to previous model version; activate fallback |

---

## 4. Backup Strategy

### 4.1 Backup Schedule

| Data Store | Method | Frequency | Retention | Encryption | Location |
|-----------|--------|-----------|-----------|------------|----------|
| Primary database | Automated snapshot | `<Continuous / hourly>` | `<30 days>` | AES-256 at rest | `<Cross-region S3 / secondary region>` |
| Object storage | Cross-region replication | Continuous | `<Per lifecycle policy>` | AES-256 at rest | `<Secondary region>` |
| Configuration / IaC | Git repository | On commit | Indefinite | In transit (TLS) | `<GitHub / GitLab>` |
| AI model artifacts | Versioned storage | On training | `<12 months>` | AES-256 at rest | `<Model registry>` |
| Secrets / credentials | Vault backup | `<Daily>` | `<90 days>` | Vault-managed | `<Secondary vault instance>` |

### 4.2 Backup Verification

- [ ] Automated backup health checks run daily
- [ ] Backup restoration tested quarterly (documented via `bcp-drp-test.yml` issue template)
- [ ] Cross-region backup accessibility verified quarterly
- [ ] Backup encryption verified (encrypted at rest and in transit)

---

## 5. Recovery Procedures

### 5.1 Cloud Region Failover

1. Confirm region outage via cloud provider status page and internal monitoring
2. Activate incident response (see IRP.md) if not already active
3. Initiate DNS failover to secondary region
4. Verify database replica promotion in secondary region
5. Confirm all Tier 1 services operational in secondary region
6. Notify customers per communication templates
7. Monitor for data consistency issues post-failover

**Estimated recovery time**: `< 1 hour` (Tier 1 services)

### 5.2 Database Restoration

1. Identify corruption/loss scope and point-in-time target
2. Initiate point-in-time restore from backup
3. Verify data integrity (checksums, row counts, application-level validation)
4. Redirect application connections to restored instance
5. Run reconciliation queries for any data gap
6. Document any data loss between RPO and incident time

**Estimated recovery time**: `< 30 min` (point-in-time restore)

### 5.3 AI Model Rollback

1. Identify model version causing issues (see post-market monitoring)
2. Revert model serving to previous known-good version
3. Verify inference outputs against golden dataset
4. Update model card with rollback details
5. Investigate root cause of model failure

**Estimated recovery time**: `< 15 min` (model version revert)

---

## 6. Roles & Communication

### 6.1 BCP/DRP Roles

| Role | Responsibility | Primary | Backup |
|------|---------------|---------|--------|
| **BCP Coordinator** | Overall disaster recovery coordination | `<name>` | `<name>` |
| **Infrastructure Lead** | Cloud failover, DNS, networking | `<name>` | `<name>` |
| **Database Lead** | Backup restoration, data integrity | `<name>` | `<name>` |
| **Application Lead** | Service recovery, health checks | `<name>` | `<name>` |
| **Communications Lead** | Customer and stakeholder notifications | `<name>` | `<name>` |

### 6.2 Communication Templates

**Customer notification (outage)**:
> We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting `<services>`. Our team is actively working to restore service. We expect resolution by `<estimated time>`. We will provide updates every `<interval>`. We apologize for the inconvenience.

**Customer notification (resolved)**:
> The service disruption affecting `<services>` has been resolved as of `<time UTC>`. All systems are operating normally. A post-incident report will be published within `<timeframe>`.

**Internal escalation**: `<Link to escalation contact list and procedures>`

---

## 7. Testing & Exercises

| Test Type | Frequency | Scope | Documentation |
|-----------|-----------|-------|---------------|
| **Backup restoration test** | Quarterly | Restore from backup; verify data integrity | GitHub issue via `bcp-drp-test.yml` template |
| **Failover drill** | Annually | Full region failover simulation | Detailed drill report |
| **Tabletop exercise** | Annually | Walk through disaster scenarios with stakeholders | Meeting notes + action items |
| **Communication test** | Annually | Verify notification chains work end-to-end | Test results |

### Success Criteria

- [ ] RTO met for all tested service tiers
- [ ] RPO met — no data loss beyond target
- [ ] All automated failover mechanisms functioned correctly
- [ ] Communication notifications delivered within defined timelines
- [ ] Restored services pass functional health checks

---

## 8. Dependencies & Vendors

| Dependency | Criticality | Failover / Alternative | Contact |
|-----------|-------------|----------------------|---------|
| `<Cloud provider>` | Critical | `<Multi-region deployment>` | `<Support contact>` |
| `<DNS provider>` | Critical | `<Secondary DNS provider>` | `<Support contact>` |
| `<CDN provider>` | High | `<Direct origin access>` | `<Support contact>` |
| `<Monitoring provider>` | High | `<Secondary monitoring>` | `<Support contact>` |

---

## 9. Document Control

| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| **Owner** | `<name / role>` |
| **Last reviewed** | `<date>` |
| **Next review** | `<date — annually or after any Tier 1 incident>` |
| **Last BCP/DRP test** | `<date>` |
| **Approval** | `<approver name and date>` |
| **Version** | `<version number>` |
