A corporate Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a documented, structured approach for how an organization responds to unplanned incidents — cyberattacks, natural disasters, hardware failures, outages — and restores critical systems and operations. Here’s an overview of what a solid plan typically includes, along with example structures.
Core Components of a DRP
1. Purpose and scope
Defines what the plan covers (IT systems, facilities, data, third-party vendors) and what triggers activation.
2. Roles and responsibilities
- Disaster Recovery Team lead
- IT/systems recovery team
- Communications lead (internal/external messaging)
- Executive sponsor
- Contact list with backups for each role
3. Risk assessment & business impact analysis (BIA)
Identifies which systems/processes are most critical, and quantifies:
- RTO (Recovery Time Objective): how fast a system must be restored
- RPO (Recovery Point Objective): how much data loss is tolerable (e.g., “last backup within 4 hours”)
4. Backup strategy
- What’s backed up (databases, code repos, configs, documents)
- Frequency (real-time replication, hourly, daily)
- Storage location (offsite, cloud, geographically separate region)
- Testing/verification schedule
5. Recovery procedures
Step-by-step technical instructions per system/scenario, e.g.:
- Server/data center outage → failover to secondary site
- Ransomware attack → isolate, restore from clean backup, notify legal/compliance
- Office/facility loss → remote work activation, alternate site logistics
6. Communication plan
- Internal notification tree (who calls whom, in what order)
- Customer/stakeholder communication templates
- Regulatory/legal notification requirements (e.g., breach disclosure laws)
7. Testing & maintenance
- Tabletop exercises (walk through a scenario as a team)
- Full failover tests (actually switch to backup systems)
- Annual/semi-annual plan review and update schedule
Example Scenarios Companies Plan For
- Ransomware/cyberattack
- Data center/cloud provider outage (e.g., AWS region down)
- Natural disaster (fire, flood, earthquake) affecting a facility
- Extended power outage
- Key vendor/supplier failure
- Loss of key personnel or leadership
