# AEGIS — Recovery Exercise Framework

- **Document ID:** ARCH-51
- **Phase:** E.3 — Adversarial/Defensive Teams
- **Status:** Draft for review (post four-reviewer discipline)
- **Version:** 0.1
- **Date:** 2026-07-10
- **Owner:** Chief Security Architect

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## 1. Purpose

Codify the recurring recovery exercises AEGIS runs. Untested recovery is worse than none. Every recovery mechanism (backup, restore, key rotation, DR, ransomware response) is drilled with a Recovery Integrity Attestation produced per drill (ARCH-18 §8).

## 2. Exercise Types

- **Backup drill** — verify a scheduled backup restores in scratch environment.
- **Restore drill** — full point-in-time restore for a canary tenant.
- **DR drill** — full-platform restore from immutable + air-gap copy.
- **Ransomware simulation** — synthetic ransomware event triggers Recovery Domain isolation drill.
- **KEK rotation drill** — controlled backup-KEK rotation with drilled ceremony.
- **Kernel Rotation drill** — ARCH-13 §7 secure recovery mode rehearsal.
- **Air-gap update drill** — signed bundle ingress and rollout.
- **Ceremony drill** — signing ceremony rehearsals.

## 3. Cadence

- **Weekly** — backup drill.
- **Weekly** — restore drill on canary tenant.
- **Monthly** — DR drill.
- **Quarterly** — ransomware simulation.
- **Biannually** — KEK rotation ceremony drill; Kernel Rotation drill; air-gap update drill.
- **Annually** — full recovery capability drill including cross-region.

## 4. Recovery-Integrity Attestation

Every drill produces the five-question attestation (ARCH-18 §8):
1. Was recovery complete?
2. Was evidence preserved?
3. Was rollback possible?
4. Did recovery introduce drift?
5. Was integrity re-established?

Attestations are signed and stored per ARCH-43 (Evidence Traceability).

## 5. Trust Score Contribution

Drill outcomes feed `Recovery Status` heavily; also `Verification` and `Operational History`.

## 6. Assumption (hypothesis)

- **H-1.** *Weekly drills preserve RTO/RPO SLOs.*
   - Evidence: initial cycle results.
   - Validation: metric-tracked; SLO regressions incident-triaged.
   - Confidence: High initially, refined per cycle.
   - Expiration: annually.
   - Review Date: 6 months.

## 7. Security-Mechanism 4-Question Spec (mandate #3)

- **What if a drill fails?** Real-recovery capability at risk; treated as incident.
- **Compensating mechanism?** Multiple recovery paths; air-gap copy + immutable + Recovery Domain.
- **Detection?** Drill outcome metric + attestation content.
- **Attacker hiding?** Signed attestations + external audit annual review.

## 8. Independent Architecture Review

- **F-1.** *Frequent drills consume resources.* Automated where safe; scoped tenants.
- **F-2.** *Attestations may become perfunctory.* Auditor sampling.

## 9. Adversarial Architect Review

- **A-1.** *Insider fakes attestation.* Signed by Recovery + Auditor + Kernel-in-Recovery-Mode co-sign.
- **A-2.** *Attacker targets drilled scenarios only.* Scenario rotation + surprise elements.
- **A-3.** *Attacker manipulates drill environment.* Environment integrity verified before drill.

## 10. Operational Reliability Review

- **O-1.** Automation reduces cost.
- **O-2.** Drill retrospectives standardized.

## 11. Self-Critique

- **S-1.** *Real DR is expensive to drill.* Quarterly ransomware sim + biannual cross-region + annual full-stack — balanced.
- **S-2.** *Ceremony drills may drift from real ceremonies.* Aligned with actual ceremony operation.

## 12. First-Target Analysis and Redesign

**Target:** the drill environment itself. If drills run in an environment that doesn't mirror production, results are misleading. Response: environment parity checks + rotation of drill environments + occasional production canary drill.

## 13. Future Risks / Known Limitations / Out-of-Scope / Retirement

- **Future Risks.** Recovery expectations vs. multi-region growth.
- **Known Limitations.** Drills bounded; occasional real-recovery evidence needed.
- **Out-of-Scope.** Destructive drills in production.
- **Retirement Conditions.** Never.

## 14. Decisions

### D-51-1. Recurring drill cadence tied to Recovery Integrity Attestation

- **Reason.** Recovery Isolation mandate + attestation discipline.

## 15. Change Log

- **0.1 (2026-07-10)** — Initial draft.