Start with a Business Impact Analysis
Identify every business process, the systems that support it, and the cost per hour of downtime. This gives you the data to set RTO (recovery time) and RPO (data loss tolerance) per system — not by gut feel.
Most companies discover their finance and customer-facing systems need <4h RTO and <15min RPO, while internal tools can tolerate 24h.
Layered backup architecture
Follow 3-2-1-1-0: three copies, two media types, one off-site, one immutable / air-gapped, zero errors after verification.
Immutable backups are the single most effective control against modern ransomware that targets backup repositories first.
Replication, not just backup
For tier-1 systems, asynchronous replication to a secondary site or sovereign cloud lets you meet RPO in minutes. Pair with image-level snapshots for point-in-time recovery.
Document the exact failover and failback procedures — undocumented heroics fail under stress.
Runbooks and ownership
Every critical system needs a written runbook: who triggers DR, in what order systems come back, dependencies, communications template, and rollback criteria.
Assign a primary and backup DR owner for each system.
Test quarterly or it is fiction
Run a tabletop exercise every quarter and a full failover at least annually. Measure actual RTO and RPO; update plans where they slip.
Untested DR plans fail at the moment they matter most.
Communicate during incidents
Prepare customer, employee and regulator communication templates ahead of time. Designate a single spokesperson and a status page.
Reputation damage from poor communication usually exceeds the technical impact.
Conclusion
Disaster recovery is a programme, not a project. Build it on real impact data, test it relentlessly, and review it twice a year. Your insurance, your auditors and your customers depend on it.
