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The Arpio team just returned from our first AWS London Summit, and we loved having the opportunity to see our UK & EU-based customers, meet new faces across the pond, and stay on top of the latest AWS innovations. After all, whether you are protecting Paris or failing over to Frankfurt, Arpio has you covered across all AWS EU Regions and across all AWS commercial Regions globally.

 

We had a staggering number of thoughtful conversations throughout the one-day event and were pleased to find folks as passionate and curious about disaster recovery, business continuity, and overall cloud resilience as we are! Between those chats and conference sessions, we came away with some key insights that we had to pass along.

  1. DORA & new regulatory requirements are the new normal – and not so bad
  2. Ransomware recovery is more relevant than ever 
  3. Sustainability matters, and it’s a team effort

1. DORA & new regulatory requirements are the new normal – and not so bad

We talked about the newly implemented Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) with the many financial services and fintech organizations who came by Arpio’s booth. The overwhelming consensus was that by requiring more stringent protocols and security postures, DORA is net beneficial to the finance sector in the EU & UK.

A lot of the folks we spoke with shared that they were having a hard time meeting the requirements in DORA Chapter IV, on Digital Operational Resilience Testing. Regular, realistic testing is tough when there’s a risk of disrupting production. That’s where Arpio’s bubble testing really clicked for people. Bubble testing means spinning up a copy of your workload in a network-isolated environment—a “bubble”—so you can validate your disaster recovery plan without touching production. It makes testing safer, easier, and something teams can actually do more often.

 

2. Ransomware recovery is more relevant than ever 

When talking about ransomware and cybersecurity, scanning and prevention make up most of the conversation. But the reality is: ransomware happens–despite the best intentions, planning, and software investments.

A ransomware attack on high street UK retailers was announced just a day after the London Summit, providing a stark reminder that companies must also develop a high degree of confidence in their recovery capabilities. This particular attack had been going on for two weeks (at significant cost) when the news broke, highlighting the importance of ransomware recovery that is easy and fast to execute.  Arpio is an especially helpful tool for reducing recovery time during any disaster—12x RTO improvement in one recent case study—and offers functionality like clean room recovery to ensure that ransomware attacks are stopped in their tracks.

Read More: The CISO’s Guide to Ransomware Recovery

 

3. Sustainability matters, and it’s a team effort

One of the key themes of the Summit was Sustainability, which can be difficult to accomplish with growing business needs and increasing organizational complexity. Many traditional disaster recovery strategies fall short in this area, often relying on “hot” standby environments that mirror production and run continuously in a second region. While effective for recovery time objectives, these architectures consume significant resources—compute, storage, and network—whether or not they’re ever used. It’s a resilience strategy, but not a sustainable one. We had great conversations about how Arpio’s approach helps shift away from always-on infrastructure by enabling on-demand recovery, reducing idle resource consumption without sacrificing readiness.

Arpio uses a pilot light model, which allows recovery environments to stay idle or “spun down” when they are not needed. Depending on the complexity and type of AWS services in any given environment, RTO can be as short as a few minutes, with RPO nearing real-time. 

Sustainability hinges on the balance between managing risk and managing resources, and Arpio makes the pilot model even more attractive for most organizations’ needs by improving recovery times and making implementation easier.

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Ready to make your AWS cloud workloads truly resilient against disasters and attacks? Get in touch with us today, and we’ll show you how Arpio makes disaster recovery simple, automated, and reliable.

PS: We loved seeing our community, learning from our peers, and getting inspired by new customers. If you stopped by our booth, you might have tried your luck with our “Wheel of Misfortune.” We hope you landed on the coveted blue “clear day” space (and if you did, don’t forget to check your email for your Amazon gift card!).