#44SAFETYPROTECT

Database Backups

Continuous or scheduled DB backups

Medium

Overview

Automated database backups with retention policy. Includes full and incremental backups.

Why It Matters

Point-in-time recovery. Never lose more than minutes of data.

The Risk

Databases hold your most critical data - customer records, transactions, application state. Without verified backups, a disk failure, accidental DELETE, or ransomware attack means permanent data loss. Most teams discover their backup strategy doesn't work during the recovery attempt.

Implementation Components

A complete implementation of this capability includes:

  • Automated dumps with configurable schedules (hourly/daily)
  • Defined retention policies (e.g., 7 daily, 4 weekly, 12 monthly)
  • Off-site replication to separate storage
  • Automated restore verification testing
  • Monitoring and alerting on backup failures or size anomalies
  • Point-in-time recovery capability (WAL archiving for PostgreSQL)

Implementation Pattern

  1. 1Choose backup strategy
  2. 2Schedule automated backups
  3. 3Store off-server
  4. 4Encrypt backup data

Pipeline Coverage

This continuous capability monitors and applies to the following pipeline phases:

RELEASE

Tool Examples

These are examples, not endorsements. Choose what fits your context.