Executive Summary
This case study follows a US e-commerce company that learned a painful lesson: "we have backups" is not the same as "we can recover." Their systems did not fail because the technology was old. They failed because the recovery plan was vague, restore testing was rare, and the backup scope did not match what the business actually needed to operate.
The trigger was not ransomware. It was a cascading failure caused by a configuration change, an internal service outage, and a human mistake that locked the company out of key operational data. They lost access to critical files used for fulfillment and customer support. Order processing slowed immediately. Customer complaints spiked. Leadership demanded a timeline for recovery. The IT team could not give a confident answer.
After the incident, the company rebuilt its recovery program around a simple and realistic model:
- Protect the data that keeps revenue flowing.
- Encrypt backups before upload and keep the keys under company control.
- Test restores regularly and document results.
- Write a runbook that works when people are stressed.
They implemented RedVault Systems as their encrypted cloud backup layer, encrypting files before upload and storing encrypted backups in Backblaze B2. They paired this with practical backup and disaster recovery processes: tiered recovery priorities, restore testing, and business-led recovery sequencing.
The result was a working disaster recovery cloud posture. Not perfect. Not marketing. A program that leadership trusted because it was measured, tested, and repeatable.
This case study covers what went wrong, how the company rebuilt its recovery plan, how the new program was tested, and what changed for the business.
Organization Profile
The organization was a US-based direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand with a national customer base. They were large enough to run sophisticated fulfillment operations, but small enough that a single major outage could threaten growth targets.
Key characteristics:
- One main warehouse plus two regional fulfillment partners
- A customer support center with remote agents
- A small internal IT and operations systems team
- High dependence on digital workflows for order processing
- Seasonal revenue spikes that create extreme operational pressure
- A mix of SaaS tools and internal operational systems
What data mattered most
This business could survive an email outage. It could not survive a fulfillment outage.
The most critical data categories included:
- Order processing exports and fulfillment manifests
- Inventory reports and purchase order records
- Customer service documentation and ticket attachments
- Product catalog assets and pricing controls
- Operational SOPs for warehouse workflows
- Finance exports needed for reconciliation and vendor payments
If those files are inaccessible, the business slows down immediately.
The Starting Point
Before the incident, the company believed it had disaster recovery handled. They had backups. They had cloud services. They had a managed service partner. They even had a document labeled "DR plan."
The problem was that the plan was not operationally real.
What the DR plan looked like in practice
- Backups were running for some systems, but not all
- Restore testing was rare and not consistently documented
- Recovery priorities were not aligned to revenue workflows
- Some critical files lived on shared drives nobody had formally inventoried
- Key admin access procedures were unclear during emergencies
Leadership assumed IT could "bring everything back quickly." IT quietly hoped that was true.
This is where many businesses sit without realizing it.
The Incident That Changed Everything
The company's incident was not a single dramatic failure. It was the kind that actually happens in real operations: multiple small issues stacking until the business falls over.
Day 1: The first failure
A routine configuration change was made to improve performance on a shared file service used by fulfillment operations. The change itself was not reckless. It was a common adjustment.
Shortly after deployment:
- A sync process began failing silently.
- A service account permissions issue blocked access to a critical folder.
- The monitoring system did not flag it because the service was "technically up."
- Warehouse staff started reporting missing files and failure to generate picking lists.
Day 1: The second failure
A support supervisor tried a workaround that had helped in the past:
They copied a set of templates from an older folder version.
Unfortunately, the folder version was outdated. This created confusion across teams. Some warehouses were using one manifest format, others another. Order accuracy started to drift.
Day 1: The third failure
During the scramble, an admin attempted to rollback access settings but misapplied a policy that locked more users out.
Now the problem was no longer "a folder is missing."
It became "we cannot access the files we need to run the day."
Orders slowed. Customers started calling. Social media complaints rose quickly.
Leadership demanded an answer:
How fast can we restore access?
The IT team did not have a confident timeline. They had not tested restores at the level needed for a fulfillment-driven business.
This was the moment leadership realized:
Disaster recovery is not a document. It is a capability.
Immediate Response
They treated the incident like an operational emergency.
They formed a bridge call with:
IT, operations systems, fulfillment leadership, customer support leadership, and the managed service partner.
Their priorities were clear:
- Restore operational access quickly.
- Stop confusion across warehouses.
- Reduce customer impact.
- Document what happened.
The temporary workaround
The company reverted to limited manual processes:
- Warehouse leads used printed SOPs and older manifests to keep shipping moving.
- Customer support used basic order lookup tools to answer simple questions.
- Operations leadership paused non-essential promotions to reduce order volume temporarily.
These workarounds kept the business from fully stopping, but they were slow and error-prone.
It was clear that they needed a stronger recovery approach.
What the Incident Revealed
After stabilizing, they did an internal post-incident review. It revealed five painful truths.
Truth 1: Their backup scope did not match business reality
Some critical fulfillment documents were not backed up in a way that supported fast restoration. Certain folders existed on shared drives that were never formally classified.
Truth 2: Restore testing was not a real practice
They had not restored a full fulfillment folder set under time pressure. They had not measured restore time. They had no baseline.
Truth 3: Recovery priorities were not defined
In a revenue-driven business, recovery sequence matters. If you restore the wrong systems first, you lose time and credibility.
Truth 4: Access control failure became a disaster multiplier
The outage became worse because permissions and admin workflows were unclear under stress.
Truth 5: Leadership communication was weak
IT could not give clear timelines because they did not have measured recovery capability. That increased panic and led to rushed decisions.
This is what convinced leadership to invest:
Not the fear of ransomware, but the reality that everyday operational failures can be disasters.
The New Plan: Rebuild Disaster Recovery as a System
They rebuilt their program around a "business-first recovery" model.
They called it simple but serious business continuity planning:
- Identify what keeps revenue moving.
- Back it up consistently.
- Encrypt it before upload.
- Test restores regularly.
- Document recovery steps.
They committed to building a disaster recovery cloud posture, not by moving everything to the cloud, but by using the cloud as reliable recovery storage with encryption control and predictable restoration.
Why They Chose RedVault
The company wanted an encrypted backup model that would protect data even if cloud access were compromised, and they wanted storage durability without complex infrastructure management.
They chose RedVault because it aligned with their requirements:
- Encryption before upload
- Customer-controlled keys
- Encrypted backups stored in Backblaze B2
- Practical recovery workflow support
They also liked that the security story was explainable:
Our backups are encrypted before upload. Even if storage access is compromised, backups are unreadable without our keys.
That mattered because e-commerce businesses increasingly face vendor questionnaires, payment partner concerns, and compliance expectations.
Implementation
They implemented the new recovery program in four phases.
Phase 1: Inventory and tiering based on revenue impact
They built a recovery tier map.
Tier 1: Revenue-critical
- Fulfillment manifests and picking lists
- Inventory and replenishment exports
- Warehouse SOPs used daily
- Customer support attachments used for claims and refunds
Tier 2: Operational continuity
- Marketing assets and product catalog support files
- Vendor paperwork and purchase order documentation
- Finance exports for reconciliation
Tier 3: Lower urgency
- Archives and historical data sets
- Old campaign assets
- Nonessential shared drive folders
This tiering allowed them to answer the question leadership always asks during crises:
What comes back first?
Phase 2: Backup scope standardization
They standardized backup scope across:
- Fulfillment shared folders
- Inventory and purchasing exports
- Customer support documentation repositories
- Finance export folders
They eliminated informal "shadow" folders by creating approved storage locations and policies.
Phase 3: Key discipline and access governance
Because encryption before upload requires key responsibility, they created a key handling policy:
- Dual-control emergency access for recovery keys
- Secure storage of recovery information
- Quarterly verification drills to confirm keys can be used
- Clear role-based access control for backup administration
They treated key governance like a business continuity control, not an IT secret.
Phase 4: Restore testing and runbook development
They created a restore testing schedule that leadership could see.
- Monthly restore tests for Tier 1
- Quarterly simulation where they restore a full fulfillment folder set
- Measured restore time and friction points
- Written runbook updates after each test
Their runbook included:
- How to identify impacted data sets
- How to choose safe restore points
- How to restore in the right order
- How to validate restored manifests and templates
- How to coordinate with warehouse and support teams
- How to communicate timeline updates without guessing
This turned recovery into a repeatable process.
The Second Test: Peak Season Dry Run
The company tested the program during a planned simulation in peak season preparation.
They ran a scenario:
A shared fulfillment folder becomes inaccessible due to permissions failure. Warehouse operations need manifests within hours.
They executed the runbook:
- Identified Tier 1 folders
- Selected safe restore points
- Restored and validated the folder set
- Measured how long it took to get operations back to stable behavior
They discovered a bottleneck:
One validation step relied on a single operations analyst.
They fixed it by:
Cross-training two backups and documenting validation steps more clearly.
This is why tests matter. They reveal human bottlenecks, not just technical ones.
Outcome After Program Rebuild
Six months after implementing the new program, the company faced another operational failure, this time involving a corrupted folder structure after a sync issue.
The difference was night and day.
They executed the runbook and restored Tier 1 folders quickly. Warehouse operations resumed normal flow within the same day. Customer support volume did not spike. Leadership stayed calm because IT provided a measured timeline and delivered on it.
They did not avoid every issue. But they avoided the meltdown.
Business Impact
The recovery program produced business results.
- Reduced downtime risk and faster operational recovery
- Higher leadership confidence in IT
- Improved vendor and partner trust due to clearer security posture
- Fewer panic-driven emergency changes during incidents
- Better documentation for audits, insurance, and internal governance
They also improved morale. Warehouse teams and customer support teams trusted that IT could restore what they needed quickly.
Key Takeaways for US Companies
Disaster recovery is not only about ransomware. Everyday failures can become disasters when recovery is vague.
A practical disaster recovery cloud posture includes:
- Tier-based recovery priorities tied to revenue workflows
- Encrypted cloud backup with customer-controlled keys
- Restore testing with measured timelines
- A clear runbook that works under pressure
- Validation steps to prevent restoring the wrong versions
- Business-led recovery sequencing and communication
If leadership cannot trust recovery timelines, recovery becomes panic. This program prevented panic.
References
- RedVault Systems product and security feature descriptions, including encryption before upload, customer-controlled key model, and encrypted object storage in Backblaze B2
- Backblaze B2 documentation concepts about durable cloud object storage and client-side encryption approaches
- Widely used business continuity planning and disaster recovery testing patterns documented in standard incident response playbooks and resilience guidance