Case Study: AtkinsRéalis achieves 2-hour Active Directory disaster recovery with Quest

Slashing Active Directory disaster recovery time from days to hours

AtkinsRéalis, a global engineering and infrastructure firm with about 38,000 employees and a hybrid IT estate comprising four Active Directory forests and multiple Entra ID tenants, relied on Microsoft’s manual recovery processes and custom scripts. Because AD drives more than 90% of authentications, tests showed forest recovery still took 2–3 days and full business restoration up to one or two weeks, with gaps in restoring cloud-only Entra ID attributes and risks of ransomware reinfection.

By adopting Quest Recovery Manager for Active Directory Disaster Recovery Edition and On Demand Recovery, AtkinsRéalis cut full AD forest recovery from days to roughly 2 hours, automated restoration of Entra ID properties (conditional access, MFA, service principals), and used air‑gapped, malware‑scanned backups to prevent reinfection. The solution also enables fast granular object restores and more frequent testing, delivering faster time to value and stronger cyber resilience.

AtkinsRéalis

Vikky Hudson

Identity Technical Lead Manager