From Extended Downtime to Rapid Recovery: Leading Insurer Modernizes DR and Enhances Cyber Resilience with Recovery Point

One of the largest U.S. commercial property and casualty insurers, this client has delivered specialized risk solutions for over 125 years. Operating across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, the company prioritizes operational resilience and continuously adapts its IT and cybersecurity strategy to outpace the growing threat of ransomware and cyberattacks.

Prior to engaging Recovery Point, the client relied on a self-managed, on-premises recovery solution at a secondary site in the Southeast, supporting replication for critical data and backup workloads from its Midwest-based production environment.

While this setup provided point-in-time recovery for individual applications and databases, it lacked the infrastructure and scalability to support full failover across the client’s diverse server platforms.

The limitations became painfully clear during a ransomware attack in early 2021, which led to a 52-day recovery timeline—a major operational and compliance setback in the highly regulated insurance sector.

Determined to eliminate this risk going forward, the client began searching for a strategic partner with proven expertise in orchestrating complex, cross-platform recovery—including isolated recovery environments (IREs), or “cleanrooms,” essential for secure post-breach remediation

Initial efforts with their MSP and Advisory firm failed to deliver a viable solution. Guided by insights from the Gartner Market Guide for DRaaS, the internal IT team engaged Recovery Point to architect a tertiary resiliency strategy that could meet both immediate and future recovery requirements.

Recovery Point led the design and deployment of a next-generation disaster recovery environment, engineered to replace the client’s aging secondary site and deliver full failover capabilities across all critical platforms.

Key solution components include:

• Quarterly DR Testing to ensure ongoing readiness and sharpen internal response
• System Impact Analysis to align recovery priorities with mission-critical workloads
• Cleanroom Recovery for ransomware isolation and secure restoration
• Multi-Platform Support, spanning:
  • IBM Z Mainframe
  • IBM AIX (Power Systems)
  • HP-UX
  • Sun SPARC
  • x86 Workloads
• Dedicated NetApp Storage for high-performance, scalable recovery operations

Hosted in Recovery Point’s Germantown, MD facility, the tertiary solution supports both storage and backup replication. It enables cleanroom-based failover with air-gapped backups via Commvault and adheres to strict RPO and RTO thresholds to meet regulatory mandates.

The client achieved a critical milestone in December 2024, executing its first successful enterprise-wide DR test in six years. All recovery tasks were completed within a 96-hour window, validating system readiness and operational resilience.

The new solution enables rapid, secure recovery from a range of disruptions, including cyberattacks, infrastructure failures, and data integrity threats. With cleanroom capabilities and broad platform support, the company has materially strengthened its ability to respond to modern threat vectors with speed and confidence.

The success of the Recovery Point deployment has led the client to demote its secondary site in favor of expanding the Recovery Point solution, consolidating recovery operations within the DRaaS platform.

By shifting to a modern, testable, and cleanroom-enabled recovery environment, the client has redefined its disaster recovery and cyber resilience strategy, moving from reactive recovery to proactive, validated readiness.

Today, the insurer is equipped to recover from disruptions swiftly, securely, and in full compliance with regulatory requirements—confident in a strategic partner and DRaaS platform engineered for the evolving threat landscape. This transformation not only enhances operational resilience but positions the company to lead in a risk-intensive industry where recovery speed is a competitive advantage.