Government Data Center Fire Exposes Backup Gaps

On Friday, September 26, 2025, a fire broke out at the Daejeon data center of the South Korean government. The cloud storage of the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) was damaged as a result. According to estimates, 858TB of government data was lost, of which only 26% could be restored so far.  

All government services, including taxation, postal, financial, and legal systems, went offline, and public agencies shifted to manual processing where possible.

NIRS did not maintain any data backup owing to the “system’s large-capacity, low-performance storage structure”, according to The Korea JoongAng Daily. The reference to “large-capacity, low-performance storage” typically refers to inexpensive, dense disks or archival arrays, where making regular full backups is costly and time-consuming. 

The details show the agency did not maintain any external/off-site backups. It may have maintained snapshots or even another shelf in the same data hall. Those help with disk failures or user mistakes, not building fires. Only off-site/air-gapped backups protect against site-wide disasters.

Five Fast Facts about the Data Center Fire Incident in South Korea

Here are five fast, critical facts we know:

1. Cause & site: A lithium-ion UPS battery explosion sparked a fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) data center in Daejeon on Sept 26, 2025.

2. Core loss: The government’s G-Drive (Government Drive) storage system was destroyed and had no external/off-site backups due to its large-capacity, low-performance architecture.

3. Scale of data at risk: Up to 858 TB of government data may be permanently lost; G-Drive was used by ~750,000 civil servants (about 30 GB each).

4. Systems impact & recovery: 647 government systems were suspended; 96 were destroyed (including G-Drive). As of October 8, 2025, 167 out of 647 (25.8%) systems had been restored; some destroyed workloads are being shifted to a public-private cloud at the Daegu center.

5. Investigations & human toll: Four people have been arrested over potential negligence; a 56-year-old senior officer involved in restoration died on Oct 3—circumstances under investigation.

Important Points about Service vs. Data

• Services vs. data: “Restored” means websites/apps are back. It does not mean all files are returned. G-Drive had no off-site backup, so those files are likely gone.

• What “restored” implies: An app can run again while past work files are missing. Some official records may come back later from the Onnara system.

• How recovery is happening: Teams are relocating damaged systems to Daegu and restarting the safe ones. The rising % is about systems online, not G-Drive data coming back.

Best Practices for Disaster Recovery in Public Sector Agencies

We recommend that government agencies and large enterprises adopt a few best practices for business continuity, disaster recovery, and data protection.  

The fire in Daejeon taught a simple lesson: if all your eggs sit in one basket, one bad day can stop government work. This isn’t only about hardware. It’s about setting recovery goals, spreading risk across sites, and proving, before a crisis, that you can restore services and data.

The sections below translate that into actions leaders can own.

1. RTO and RPO Planning for Disaster Recovery

Before discussing tools, determine what constitutes “good recovery.” RTO (Recovery Time Objective) refers to the time it takes for a service to recover. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is how much data you can afford to lose. Tie both to citizen impact, not to vendor features. When leaders set these targets first, budgets, designs, and staffing align, and trade-offs become clear instead of hidden.

In practice: Publish RTO/RPO by system and review them in leadership meetings. When a test misses the target, either adjust the design or revise the target, providing a written rationale for either approach.

2. Offsite Immutable Backups (3-2-1-1-0) for Data Protection

Local copies, RAID, and snapshots help with small failures. They do not save you from fires, floods, or ransomware. At least one copy must be stored off-site and be tamper-proof (immutable), with access separate from that of everyday administrators. Think of this as your last parachute: if it isn’t off-site and locked, it isn’t a parachute.

In practice: Enforce 3-2-1-1-0 (3 copies, 2 media, 1 offsite, 1 immutable, 0 backup errors) and schedule a real restore from the immutable copy on a set cadence.

3. Site-Level Disaster Recovery and Geo-Redundancy

Even with good backups, losing a building can still halt services. The plan should assume a full site outage and demonstrate how core services can be maintained elsewhere. Geographic separation, independent power and cooling, and the absence of a shared “super admin” between sites reduce the likelihood that a single event or mistake will take everything down.

In practice: Your team should use cross-region failover for live systems and maintain backups in a separate account or tenant with distinct keys and roles.

4. Petabyte-Scale Backup and Restore Planning

Cheap, slow storage is fine for archives if you can restore it on time. Leaders should ask one plain question: “If we had to restore X petabytes, from where, how fast, and in what order?” That answer drives network sizing, job windows, and how you carve up giant file stores, so one damaged area doesn’t block everything else.

In practice: Optimize size for restore speed (not just backup), split very large shares into smaller, recoverable zones, and utilize deduplication or content-addressable storage to reduce volumes.  

5. Disaster Recovery Testing and Restore Drills

A green checkmark that says “backup completed” isn’t proof. Only restores prove you’re ready. Make testing a routine part of operations, with results reviewed by leadership. Start small if needed, but keep it regular and written down. What gets tested gets better.

In practice: Run quarterly full DR exercises for top-tier systems and monthly spot restores for others. Track the mean time to restore and restore success rate as executive KPIs.  

Other best practices

• Protect the system of record by keeping authoritative records outside collaboration drives and backing them up separately.  

• Manage facility risks by treating battery rooms, fire suppression, and cooling as IT continuity issues and rehearsing around them.  

• Bake resilience into contracts and budgets by incorporating RTO/RPO, offsite immutability, and restore testing into procurement and SLAs.  

Why a customized Disaster Recovery plan matters

No two agencies look the same. Some run life-and-safety services; others manage long-term records. Data sizes, legacy systems, and legal rules vary widely. That means the “right” DR plan is not a template. Rather, it’s a design that is fit for purpose.  

Specialized consulting helps leaders turn mission needs into clear targets, choose the right mix of offsite and immutable options for their scale, and prove readiness through real restore drills. In short, you get a plan that matches your risk, your budget, and your citizens’ expectations—and evidence that it works.

How X-Centric supports public sector IT leaders

• Strategy & Governance: X-Centric IT Solutions transforms RTO/RPO into policy, classification, and decision-making rights, then conducts board-level exercises to validate readiness.

• Architecture at scale: We design off-site, immutable backup and DR patterns that meet petabyte realities without breaking budgets.

• Operational assurance: We implement automated verification and evidence, enabling you and your auditors to see recoverability, not just activity.

Explore Disaster Recovery solutions and Hardware & Software services to align policy, architecture, and operations around outcomes that matter most to citizens.