Introduction

As we navigate the hyper-connected business landscape of 2026, the definition of a "disaster" has evolved. We are no longer just planning for fires or floods; we are planning for global cloud outages, AI-driven systemic failures, and sophisticated cyber-physical attacks. In this environment, the traditional goal of "100% recovery" is often a dangerous illusion during the first 48 hours of a crisis.

Enter Minimum Viable Operations (MVO)—a resilience strategy that prioritizes the absolute minimum service level required to keep an organization strategically, financially, and legally viable while full restoration efforts are underway.

Defining Your "Core": The MVO Mindset

MVO is not just a technical checklist; it is a fundamental shift in mindset. It requires leaders to ask the "unnatural" question: If 90% of our systems were gone, what are the few functions that must stay alive to prevent our total collapse.

1. Identify Survival-Critical Functions

MVO begins with a rigorous Business Impact Analysis (BIA) focused on "survival," not just "priority". For a bank, MVO might be the ability for customers to view balances and make emergency withdrawals, even if they can't apply for new loans. For a hospital, it’s life-safety systems and medication tracking—not the billing department.

2. Map Interdependencies

In 2026, no service exists in a vacuum. Your MVO depends on a "Tier 0" infrastructure—foundational systems like Identity and Access Management (IAM), internal DNS, and core network segments. If these "extremities" fail, your "core" functions will die regardless of how well-protected they are. Use Application Dependency Mapping (ADM) to uncover these hidden single points of failure.

3. Set Realistic Survival Metrics

Forget standard RTOs (Recovery Time Objectives) for a moment. MVO focuses on Impact Tolerance—the maximum allowable time a service can be down before a regulatory breach or systemic failure occurs.

Protecting the Minimum: 2026 Defence Strategies
Once you have defined your MVO, you must build a "fortress" around it. Protection in 2026 requires more than just backups; it requires Active Resilience.

Zero Trust Micro-Segmentation

Isolate your MVO assets into "clean zones." By enforcing strict Zero Trust policies, you ensure that even if an attacker breaches your general network, they cannot laterally move into the systems that run your bare-bones operations.

Immutable Cyber Vaults

Traditional backups are often the first target in a modern attack. Protecting your MVO requires "offline" or "air-gapped" immutable storage that attackers cannot encrypt or delete.

Predictive AI Monitoring

Use AI-driven event detection to identify "early warning" signals of a catastrophic collapse. In 2026, the best MVO is one that is activated before the total outage occurs.