Key highlights
40+
AWS accounts brought under centralized, policy-driven backup governance and consistent control.
100%
Immutable backup protection via Vault Lock, preventing unauthorized deletion, ransomware, and tampering.
Continuous
Recovery Validation (CRV) with automated restore testing for proven, evidence-based recoverability.
Summary
Zensar designed a reusable Enterprise AWS Backup, Recovery and Continuous Recovery Validation (CRV) framework for a UK financial services leader. The solution turned the backup from an operational task into a strategic cyber-resilience capability, delivering centralized governance across 40+ AWS accounts, immutable cross-account and cross-region protection, and validated, evidence-based recoverability against ransomware and disaster scenarios.
Client overview
A leading UK retailer with a large-scale digital ecosystem, the organization operates an extensive AWS environment supporting business-critical workloads across its enterprise landscape. Its multi-account cloud estate spans 40+ AWS accounts, reflecting the scale and complexity of its technology operations and ongoing cloud modernization journey.
Zensar’s Brief – Steps taken by Zensar
Design an Enterprise AWS Backup and Recovery Framework with centralized governance across 40+ accounts.
Implement cross-account backup isolation and immutable (Vault Lock) backup protection.
Build a cross-region disaster recovery architecture (Ireland primary, London DR).
Introduce CRV and a Last Known Good (LKG) recovery model.
Establish centralized monitoring, compliance and audit, deployed through Infrastructure-as-Code.
Beyond the Brief – How it helped the client
Created a reusable enterprise cyber-resilience accelerator, not just a project-specific build.
Shifted the operating model from “we have backups” to “we have validated, recoverable backups.”
Delivered a repeatable blueprint, including governance, security patterns and deployment accelerators, for future AWS engagements.
Challenges
Ensuring recoverability, not just backups, establishing centralized governance, cyber resilience and disaster recovery across a rapidly growing multi-account AWS estate.
The challenge was fundamentally architectural rather than operational. Existing backups worked, but the design lacked the isolation, governance, resilience and recovery assurance needed to withstand cyber incidents and large-scale failures. Traditional processes confirmed backup completion yet offered no reliable way to prove that recovery could be executed when required. Managing controls independently across 40+ accounts created standardization, compliance, and consistency gaps. Backups stored close to production increase exposure in the event of an account compromise, insider misuse, or ransomware attack. The client also needed a standardized disaster recovery approach for regional outages, plus stronger monitoring, auditability, and compliance without creating a one-off, customer-specific implementation with limited long-term value.
Solutions
A cyber-resilient, governance-driven AWS backup framework with cross-account isolation, immutable storage, cross-region DR and continuous recovery validation.
Zensar delivered a Reusable Enterprise AWS Backup, Recovery and CRV Framework built entirely on AWS-native services. A centralized backup control plane governs 40+ accounts through tag-based, policy-driven onboarding deployed via Infrastructure-as-Code. Cross-account isolation decouples backups from workload-account security, while AWS Backup Vault Lock enforces immutability. Cross-region replication (Ireland primary, London DR) strengthens resilience against regional outages. Designed under an “Assume Breach” model, the framework treats ransomware, credential misuse, and insider threats as design assumptions. CRV and LKG recovery points provide automated, evidence-based recoverability assurance.
Centralized governance: A central backup services account and AWS organizations enforce consistent policies and tag-based onboarding across 40+ accounts.
Cyber-resilient protection: Cross-account isolation, Vault Lock immutability, SCPs, RBAC, and customer-managed KMS keys defend backups against ransomware and compromise.
Disaster recovery: Cross-region replication with a dedicated DR vault protects critical data against regional outages and large-scale disruption.
Recovery validation: CRV and LKG recovery points automate restore testing to confirm recoverability and identify trusted recovery points.
Solution enablers
AWS Backup
AWS Backup Vault Lock
AWS Backup Audit Manager
AWS Organizations
AWS KMS (CMKs)
AWS IAM / RBAC
Service Control Policies
AWS Config
AWS CloudFormation
AWS StackSets
AWS Lambda
AWS Step Functions
Amazon EventBridge
AWS CloudTrail
Amazon SNS
Centralized logging and audit
Impact
From “we have backups” to “validated, recoverable backups.” Strengthening cyber resilience across the multi-account AWS estate.
40+ AWS accounts
Centralized backup governance with consistent policy enforcement.
100% immutable
Vault Lock protection preventing unauthorized deletion or tampering.
Cross-region DR
Improved resilience against regional outages and large-scale failures.
Continuous validation
Automated restore testing delivering evidence-based recoverability.
Business outcome
The initiative significantly strengthened the organization’s cyber-resilience posture through immutable backups, cross-account isolation and layered security designed to withstand ransomware, privileged misuse and administrative compromise. Continuous Recovery Validation transformed the operating model from merely maintaining backups to continuously validating recoverability. Centralized, policy-driven governance improved auditability, compliance reporting and operational oversight, while automation and Infrastructure-as-Code reduced administrative effort and configuration drift. Cross-region replication improved business continuity readiness. Critically, the engagement produced a reusable enterprise accelerator that can be reconsumed across future AWS engagements, reducing design effort, accelerating delivery and strengthening Zensar’s cloud resilience offerings.