Marco Gaietti brings decades of strategic management experience to the table, specifically focusing on how modern enterprises bridge the gap between operational efficiency and risk mitigation. In today’s digital climate, he highlights how the relationship between cyber insurance and disaster recovery has fundamentally shifted, moving from a simple financial transaction to a core driver of technical architecture.
This conversation explores the transition from “check-the-box” security declarations to rigorous, evidence-based underwriting. Gaietti breaks down how insurers now dictate specific architectural choices like immutable storage and air-gapping, the necessity of board-level accountability, and the strategies required to survive systemic failures that fall outside traditional policy coverage.
Many organizations now treat cyber insurance as a technical design input rather than just a financial safety net. How does this shift influence specific architectural choices like immutable storage or air-gapped copies, and what metrics prove these backups are actually recoverable?
The shift is profound because insurers no longer take your word for it; they want to see the “how” behind your resilience. We are seeing a move toward the 3-2-1 backup strategy as a baseline, but with a heavy emphasis on immutable storage—configurations that are write-once and literally cannot be modified by a rogue actor. Beyond just having the data, carriers are looking for air-gapped or offline copies stored entirely outside the production network to ensure a “clean room” exists for recovery. To prove these are recoverable, we look at the gap between backup completion and successful restoration; it is no longer enough to show a green checkmark on a backup job. We track the success rate of actual data hydration and the integrity of the files once they are moved back into a live environment.
Insurers are moving away from simple security declarations toward requiring rigorous proof of restoration testing. Can you walk us through the step-by-step process of validating backups for critical systems and how specific RPO and RTO targets impact insurance premiums?
The validation process starts with establishing clear Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) for every critical system, which then dictates the frequency of our drills. We move from documented ownership of the policy to regular restoration testing where we actually spin up systems from backup data to confirm they are functional. This evidence of “restore, not just backup” is what underwriters use to calculate risk; the more aggressive and proven your RTOs are, the more favorable your premium terms become. If an organization fails to provide documented results of these tests, they face significantly higher costs or even a total lack of a quote. It is a high-stakes environment where the quality of your testing documentation directly correlates to the financial viability of your policy.
Governance requirements now include board-level reporting on recovery capabilities and quarterly health updates. How should leadership structure these reports to satisfy underwriters, and what specific evidence is needed to demonstrate clear accountability for disaster recovery plan maintenance?
Leadership needs to move away from technical jargon and present a transparency-focused health report that highlights backup health and gap remediation efforts on a quarterly basis. Underwriters want to see a designated chain of accountability, essentially a “who is responsible” list for the maintenance of the Disaster Recovery (DR) plan. The report must include specific evidence such as update schedules, results from the latest restoration drills, and a summary of how technical debt is being addressed. By bringing this to the board level, it demonstrates that cyber resilience is a corporate priority rather than just an IT problem, which provides the “operational security control” evidence insurers now demand.
With exclusions for nation-state attacks and systemic events becoming common, organizations cannot rely solely on payouts. What strategies help design recovery plans that account for widespread vendor failures or SaaS platform outages that insurance might not cover?
When policies from major players like Lloyd’s of London exclude state-backed attacks or systemic failures, the architecture must become self-reliant. We advise organizations to maintain independent backup copies of SaaS and cloud data rather than relying on the provider’s built-in redundancy, which might fail simultaneously during a regional outage. You have to assume the insurance payout might never come and build your recovery procedures to function even when widespread vendor failures occur. Some firms are even turning to captive insurance programs to absorb these excluded costs, ensuring they have a dedicated fund to fuel recovery when commercial policies trigger an exclusion clause.
Legacy tools often lack the immutability features required by modern insurers. What is the best approach for consolidating fragmented disaster recovery plans after a merger, and how do you identify and eliminate “shadow IT” backups that might jeopardize a claim?
The consolidation process must begin with a rigorous audit of the technical debt inherited during the merger, specifically identifying legacy tools that cannot support “locked” configurations. We look for “shadow IT” by scanning for consumer-grade backup tools that employees might be using in silos, as these are unmanaged and often lead to claim denials. The best approach is to migrate these fragmented systems into a unified, enterprise-grade architecture that meets the insurer’s definitions of geographic separation and immutability. Failing to align these disparate systems can lead to an “attestation inaccuracy,” where the insurer rescinds the policy because the actual deployed systems don’t match what was claimed on the renewal form.
During a breach, insurers demand prompt notification and a clear chain-of-custody for data. How do you document that backups used for restoration are malware-free, and what specific logs must be maintained to ensure the carrier honors the policy?
Documentation starts the moment a breach is discovered, as most policies require notification within a tight 24- to 72-hour window. To ensure a claim is honored, we maintain detailed logs showing exactly which backup snapshots were selected and the specific time it took to restore them. We also implement a chain-of-custody protocol for backup data, providing forensic proof that the copies used for restoration were clean and not part of the initial infection chain. This sensory level of detail—tracking every movement of the data—is vital because if you restore from a compromised backup, the insurer may view it as a failure of your internal controls.
What is your forecast for the future of cyber insurance and its relationship with backup architecture?
I predict that the “shared responsibility” model will become much more rigid, where insurers will mandate that organizations maintain completely autonomous backups for every single SaaS platform they use. We will likely see a move toward real-time telemetry where insurers plug directly into an organization’s backup health dashboard to adjust premiums dynamically based on daily restoration readiness. The ambiguity around terms like “immutable” will vanish as the industry settles on a universal technical standard, forcing every company to modernize or face total uninsurability. Ultimately, the backup architecture will no longer be a background process; it will be the very foundation upon which a company’s financial and operational credibility is built.
