Summary
Howard Holton, CTO of GigaOm, introduces the concept of Minimum Viable Company (MVC) as a cyber recovery strategy that prioritizes restoring core business functions immediately following a security incident. Rather than attempting full system restoration, the MVC approach identifies the essential subset of operations needed to keep the business running while incident investigation continues in parallel. Holton explains how organizations can define their critical systems—such as ERP platforms, customer-facing websites, and inventory management—and develop specialized tiger teams to execute rapid failover and recovery. The strategy emphasizes maintaining investigative and evidentiary integrity while simultaneously bringing minimum viable operations online. Commvault positions itself as both a technology provider and consulting partner in this process, offering tools that simplify testing and validation of MVC plans. The framework is flexible enough to apply at the enterprise level or to specific business units, with iterative testing recognized as essential to refining what truly constitutes minimum viability for each organization.
