Features such as replication, snapshots, and high availability can be used to speed system recovery, giving virtual systems an edge over traditional infrastructure. When designing a system, you should take advantage of these strengths wherever possible.
Virtualisation provides functionality which can help you recover from compromise quickly.
For example, your virtualisation platform can consist of multiple nodes to make a cluster, virtualised systems can then be replicated to multiple nodes, providing a quick recovery option should a node in your infrastructure become unavailable.
Having a backup of your system in a known good state could also be beneficial when recovering from a compromise. This can be achieved using snapshots or separate reference platforms. Ensure that these backups represent the latest iteration of your system and are continually patched.
5.2 Design your system to gracefully degrade service
Design systems which can gracefully degrade functionality, delivering a minimal set of services, in the event of an incident which prevents you from maintaining full functionality.
In a situation where the full feature set of a system can’t be delivered, perhaps due to cyber attack or even natural disaster,use the flexibility of virtualisation to respond quickly to any degradation in service.
For example, virtualisation can provide a means to quickly spin up systems in a good known state or perhaps networking can be quickly reconfigured to direct users to a failover system.
