Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery (DR) focuses specifically on the restoration of technology infrastructure and systems after a major disruption, as a subset of the broader business continuity discipline. A disaster recovery plan defines how the organization will recover its critical IT systems within the Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) established through the business impact analysis. DR strategies range from cold sites (basic infrastructure that requires significant time to activate), through warm sites (partially configured environments that can be brought online relatively quickly), to hot sites (fully replicated environments that can assume operations almost immediately). Cloud-based DR has made hot-site capabilities more accessible to organizations of all sizes.

Disaster recovery is a compliance requirement across multiple frameworks. ISO 27001 Annex A control A.5.30 addresses ICT readiness for business continuity, requiring that ICT readiness be planned, implemented, maintained, and tested based on business continuity objectives and requirements. SOC 2's Availability criteria require organizations to demonstrate that they can restore system availability consistent with their commitments to customers. NIS2 mandates disaster recovery as one of the core cybersecurity risk management measures. GDPR Article 32(1)(c) requires the ability to restore the availability and access to personal data in a timely manner in the event of a physical or technical incident. In technology due diligence, DR capabilities and testing frequency are key indicators of operational resilience.

A robust disaster recovery program includes several components. DR strategies should be aligned with business impact analysis results, ensuring that the most critical systems have the most aggressive recovery targets. DR procedures should be documented in sufficient detail that they can be executed by personnel who may not have designed them. Regular DR testing is essential — organizations should conduct tabletop exercises, failover tests, and full-scale recovery simulations to verify that RTO and RPO objectives can actually be met. Cloud-native DR approaches leverage multi-region deployments, automated failover, infrastructure as code for rapid environment reconstruction, and managed database replication. All DR activities should be documented, and test results should be reviewed by management to identify gaps and improvement opportunities.