A Disaster Recovery Plan is a structured strategy to restore business resources and resume operations as fast as possible after a disruption. These disruptions may come from natural disasters, system failures, or cyber incidents.
Without a clear Disaster Recovery Plan, businesses face serious financial losses, operational downtime, and reputational damage. Therefore, having a tested and documented recovery strategy is essential to protect critical applications and data.
Step 1: Risk Assessment in a Disaster Recovery Plan
The first step in building a Disaster Recovery Plan is risk assessment. The goal is to identify potential threats that can disrupt business continuity and impact critical assets.
First, list all possible risks, such as:
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Fire
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Severe storms
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Pandemic
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Power outage
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Cyberattacks
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Hardware failure
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Human error
Next, assign two scores to each risk:
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The likelihood of occurrence
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The potential impact on business operations
As a result, this method helps prioritize the most dangerous risks first.
Then, identify critical assets that may be affected, including:
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People
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Property and key infrastructure
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IT systems (hardware and software)
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Business systems and equipment
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Company reputation
For each asset, analyze weaknesses that increase exposure to these risks.
Step 2: Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
A Business Impact Analysis helps measure the real impact of disruption on each asset. At this stage, companies evaluate financial and operational consequences.
Possible impacts include:
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Revenue loss
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Brand reputation damage
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Contract penalties
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Physical asset damage
To gain accurate insight, conduct interviews or surveys with asset owners and department managers. Consequently, companies can choose the right recovery strategy and allocate resources more efficiently.
Step 3: Define Recovery Objectives for Each Asset
After completing risk assessment and BIA, define recovery objectives for all assets. This step clarifies how fast systems must be restored.
Assets can be categorized as follows:
Mission-Critical Applications
These systems must stay online at all times. Recovery targets are usually 15 minutes or less.
Business-Critical Applications
These applications are important but can tolerate short downtime, such as up to one hour.
Business-Imperative Applications
These systems support operations but allow longer recovery time with limited impact.
Non-Critical Applications
Rarely used systems with minimal business impact. Longer downtime is acceptable.
Step 4: Technical Approach for Enterprise Disaster Recovery
In an Enterprise Disaster Recovery strategy, companies apply three types of controls:
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Preventive controls to reduce disaster risks
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Detective controls to identify system issues early
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Corrective controls to restore systems after failure
At this stage, companies decide whether to use on-premise, public cloud, or hybrid cloud infrastructure. Cloud-based Disaster Recovery often provides faster recovery and better scalability.
Step 5: Document the Disaster Recovery Plan
A Disaster Recovery Plan must be clearly documented and easy to execute. It should include:
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Assigned recovery team members and responsibilities
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Step-by-step recovery procedures
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Recovery plans for each asset, service, and application
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Required tools and supporting resources
At this point, the organization should have a fully executable Disaster Recovery Plan.
Step 6: Testing and Simulation
Before real incidents occur, testing is critical. There are two key activities:
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Training to ensure teams understand their roles
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Testing to validate recovery speed and accuracy
Testing should be performed at least twice a year. Additionally, all results must be recorded for future improvement.
Step 7: Monitor and Improve the Disaster Recovery Plan
A Disaster Recovery Plan is not static. After each test, collect feedback and review performance gaps. Continuous improvement ensures the plan remains effective as business needs evolve.
Cloud Disaster Recovery by Indonesian Cloud
To simplify Disaster Recovery implementation, Indonesian Cloud provides Cloud Disaster Recovery solutions. This service protects systems, applications, and data before, during, and after disasters.
When the primary data center fails, Cloud DR automatically takes over. As a result, business operations continue without disruption. We offer:
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Cloud DR with Veeam
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Cloud DR with Zerto
If you want to explore more technology insights or learn about Indonesian Cloud products, visit IndonesianCloud.com or cloudhostingaja.com.
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