Everyone needs a disaster recovery plan...
These days, we're primed to expect the unexpected. It used to be a common misconception that only large enterprises or global corporations need a well-rounded disaster recovery plan. But of course, disruptions, whether from cyber attacks, natural disasters, or system failures, affect businesses of every size and in every sector. Preparing for the unexpected is not just good practice, it’s essential.
A disaster recovery plan forms the foundation of your response to major disruptions and is also useful for planned events such as migrations, upgrades and office moves. At its most basic, a disaster recovery plan defines how your data is backed up, where it’s stored, and who’s responsible for restoring operations. For larger organisations, the plan becomes more complex, factoring in alternative workspaces, communication strategies, equipment replacement, and more.
Below, we share the ten essential steps to help you create an effective disaster recovery plan that supports business continuity, complete with explanations and top tips for successful planning.
1. Define clear objectives
Start by outlining the purpose of your disaster recovery plan. What are you trying to achieve?
Common goals include:
- Reducing downtime and service interruptions.
- Minimising financial and operational impact.
- Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
- Safeguarding business reputation.
- Establishing temporary workarounds for disrupted operations.
- Training employees to respond effectively during incidents.
Top tip: clarity at this stage will shape the direction of your plan and help ensure alignment with your overall business strategy and buy-in from the wider business.
2. Take stock of your IT environment
List every critical component of your IT infrastructure, such as servers, applications, devices, networks, and cloud services. Where is each system hosted? Which ones are business-critical?
Group applications and systems into categories such as:
- Essential for daily operations.
- Important but not immediately critical.
- Non-essential (can wait a few days).
Once you have defined your most critical applications you will be able to see which ones you need to prioritise above all others in the event of a disaster.
Top tip: this needs to be done from a business perspective, with collaboration from all business functions to understand the business impact of downtime and data loss across your IT landscape.
3. Establish recovery time and point objectives (RTOs and RPOs)
Let’s take a moment to clarify what we mean by RTO and RPO. Your RTO (recovery time objective) defines the maximum amount of time a system or application can be down before the impact becomes unacceptable to your business. In other words, it answers the question: “How quickly do we need to recover this system?” Your RPO (recovery point objective) defines the maximum amount of data loss your business can tolerate, answering: “How much data can we afford to lose if something goes wrong?”
Understanding these objectives is critical because they directly shape your disaster recovery strategy and business continuity planning. RTO and RPO help you:
- Prioritise systems and data: critical systems with short RTOs or low RPOs get restored first, minimising operational disruption.
- Optimise costs: not all systems require rapid recovery or frequent backups, so you can allocate resources efficiently.
- Choose the right technology: they guide decisions on hardware, software, and backup solutions to meet your recovery needs.
- Protect your business: by defining tolerances for downtime and data loss, you ensure your organization can survive outages, cyber attacks, or other disasters with minimal impact.
In short, RTO tells you how fast you need to recover, and RPO tells you how much data loss is acceptable. Together, they form the backbone of a resilient, cost-effective recovery plan.
Top tip: regularly review and update your RTOs and RPOs to reflect changes in your business priorities, system usage, and the value of your data. This keeps your recovery plan aligned with what matters most.
4. Train your disaster recovery team
A disaster recovery plan is only as effective as the people executing it. Assign roles and responsibilities for each stage of your recovery process.
Top tip: keep your disaster recovery documentation up to date and easily accessible, and ensure staff are cross-trained so colleagues can step in if specialist team members are on leave or unavailable during an incident.
5. Create a communication strategy
During a crisis, clear and timely communication is vital. Your plan should detail how you will communicate with:
- Employees/users.
- Internal stakeholders.
-
Customers.
- Vendors and partners.
Top tip: in the event of an incident, you will be called upon to keep stakeholders updated. Ensuring you have backup contact methods and creating pre-approved message templates can streamline communications during high-pressure situations.
6. Prevent what you can
While not all disruptions can be prevented, mitigation should still be a key component of your disaster recovery plan.
For example:
- Install automated fire suppression systems.
- Maintain updated cyber security protocols.
- Monitor system performance for early signs of failure.
Top tip: focus on proactive prevention by combining technology, processes, and regular monitoring, this reduces the chance of incidents and limits their impact if they do occur.
7. Define response procedures
Outline step-by-step actions to be taken during a disaster, covering more than just IT systems. How will you maintain communication? How will you contact key staff? Can incoming calls be rerouted?
Top tip: keep response procedures detailed, accessible, and easy to follow, and ensure all staff know their roles so critical actions can be executed quickly and efficiently during a disaster.
8. Plan for temporary workspaces
If your physical office becomes unusable, your disaster recovery plan should include alternative workspace arrangements.
This may involve:
- Relocating staff to other company sites.
- Pre-arranging access to alternative workspace.
- Enabling remote work setups.
Top tip: ensure equipment, connectivity, and security controls are in place to maintain productivity and compliance from any location.
9. Select a disaster recovery site
If your main IT infrastructure is taken offline, you’ll need a secondary location where critical systems can be restored.
This could be:
- A dedicated backup data centre.
- A virtualised environment in the public cloud.
- A colocation site with mirrored infrastructure.
Top tip: ensure your disaster recovery site is configured to automatically replicate workloads and support real-time recovery.
10. Test and review regularly
Your disaster recovery plan isn’t complete until it’s been tested. This is without question, the most important step, firstly because it will demonstrate your success in applying all of the previous steps. Secondly, unless you’ve tested your plan, you quite simply do not know if it will be successful if you need to use it.
Regular testing:
- Validates that procedures work.
- Confirms staff understand their roles.
- Uncovers gaps in information, communication, or recovery processes.
Top tip: run simulations frequently and update the plan based on lessons learned. It’s far better to identify weaknesses during a test than during a real incident.
Final thoughts
Building a comprehensive disaster recovery plan takes time and co-ordination, but it’s an investment in your business’s resilience and continuity. A well-documented and regularly tested plan ensures that you’re prepared to act quickly, recover efficiently, and continue serving your customers, even when the unexpected occurs.
Need help getting started?
Our experts can support you with business impact analysis, disaster recovery audits, and supplier assessments. Using our advanced Shadow-Planner software, we help you map critical systems, assess dependencies, and build a responsive, effective recovery strategy.
We also offer comprehensive recovery services to ensure your business stays resilient. From disaster recovery services to data protection solutions and work area recovery, our team helps you implement practical, tailored strategies so you can quickly recover systems, data, and operations when incidents occur.
