How to create a business disaster recovery plan

Disruptions in business are inevitable. Whether caused by cyberattacks, system failures or human error. For businesses that rely heavily on technology, these interruptions can halt operations and lead to financial losses and reputational damage…

That’s why creating a disaster recovery plan is no longer optional. It’s essential! A well-designed plan not only safeguards your IT systems but also supports your wider business continuity plan, ensuring your company can resume operations quickly and efficiently.

Let’s go through a whistle-stop tour of what’s involved in creating a robust IT disaster recovery strategy, covering everything from server backups, cloud solutions and cybersecurity safeguards.

Why you need a disaster recovery plan

If you’re anything like us here at Kyte, technology underpins nearly every business process.

So, if in the event that servers go offline, data becomes corrupted, or a ransomware attack locks down critical files, productivity comes to a standstill. For businesses without a recovery strategy, this downtime often leads to:

• Loss of revenue
• Damaged customer trust
• Breaches of regulatory compliance
• Permanent data loss

A carefully documented disaster recovery plan acts as a safety net. It ensures your organisation knows exactly what to do when disaster strikes, how to protect data, and how to restore operations quickly. When integrated with a wider business continuity plan, it creates resilience, allowing both your IT systems and business processes to bounce back.

Step 1: Risk assessments

The first step in creating an effective plan is to identify potential threats. These could be things like…

• Cybersecurity risks like ransomware, phishing attacks, malware
• Hardware failures like server crashes, network outages
• Environmental risks like fires, floods, power outages
• Human error like accidental deletion of data or misconfigurations

By evaluating these risks, you can prioritise the areas that are the greatest danger to your IT infrastructure. This ensures your IT disaster recovery plan addresses real, not hypothetical, threats.

Step 2: Define critical business functions

Not every system needs the same level of recovery attention. Therefore, you should rank assets by importance. Take a look at the following…

• Mission-critical systems like core servers, databases, financial applications, and communication platforms
• Important but non-critical systems like HR tools or intranet portals
• Low-priority systems like archives or legacy applications

This classification allows you to create a tiered response in the event of a disaster, prioritising functions that have the biggest impact to your business. For example, your business continuity plan should state that customer-facing systems must be operational within hours, whereas less urgent systems may be restored over several days.

Step 3: Establish recovery objectives

There are two key metrics that form the foundation of any disaster recovery plan. Here’s what they are…

• Recovery Time Objective (RTO) which is the maximum acceptable downtime for a system
• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) which is the maximum amount of data loss you can tolerate, measured in time (e.g., no more than one hour of lost data)

For example, a company might decide that email must be restored within four hours (RTO) and that no more than 15 minutes of data loss is acceptable (RPO). These objectives determine what kind of IT disaster recovery tools you need, such as systems that copy data instantly in real time or solutions that back up your servers every hour.

Step 4: Implement robust data backup solutions

Data is the lifeblood of any modern business, making backups the cornerstone of your recovery plan! Best practices include…

• Automated backups to ensure all mission-critical data is backed up automatically and regularly
• Offsite storage to store copies in geographically separate locations to avoid a single point of failure
• Cloud solutions are services like Microsoft Azure Backup or AWS Backup, which provide secure, scalable, and quick recovery options
• Testing backups to regularly verify that backups can be restored successfully (too many organisations discover corrupted backups only after disaster strikes!)

By using these methods in your disaster recovery plan, you can make sure that your data is always retrievable, even after catastrophic events.

Step 5: Prepare an alternative infrastructure

When your primary systems fail, you need a backup infrastructure ready to take over. This might involve things like…

• Cloud-based failover systems which are copies of your main systems, stored online at a data centre (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) that can be switched on quickly if your main systems fail
• Offsite failover systems, similar to cloud-based, but instead stored at a secondary site belonging to your company (e.g. warehouse or second office) which are ready to take over if your primary site goes down
• Local failover systems, similar to offsite, but instead stored at your primary site, keeping services running with little to no downtime but might not protect you from site-wide disasters (such as fire, flooding or electrical)

Cloud-based IT disaster recovery has become especially popular for small and medium businesses. It offers enterprise-level resilience without the high cost of maintaining a second data centre.

Step 6: Develop a communication strategy

Technology recovery is only part of the process. Your business continuity plan should also detail how you’ll communicate during a crisis. Staff, clients, and stakeholders need timely updates. Make sure you consider your…

• Emergency contact lists
• Pre-prepared email and SMS templates
• Collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams or Slack, which have backup systems to keep them running even if one server fails

Clear communication reassures clients and minimises confusion, helping your IT and management teams stay coordinated.

Step 7: Train your staff

Even the best disaster recovery plan fails if staff don’t know how to implement it! Regular training makes sure that employees are confident in their roles during an outage. Key actions include things like…

• Organising mock disaster scenarios
• Assigning responsibilities (e.g., IT staff handling server restores, communications team updating customers)
• Updating training whenever systems or staff change

Staff awareness also reduces risks. When employees understand phishing threats or safe data practices, they become part of your IT disaster recovery defence.

Step 8: Test, review and update regularly

A disaster recovery plan is not a static document. Technology evolves, and unfortunately, so do threats. So you should schedule regular reviews and testing exercises to…

• Verify that backups restore correctly and actually test them by restoring files or whole systems to make sure the data is usable. A backup that can’t be restored is as good as no backup at all!

• Practice switching over to your backup servers or cloud systems by running practice drills where you switch over to your backup servers or cloud systems to check they work properly and can handle the load if your main systems fail.

• Identify weaknesses in your processes by using the tests above to spot gaps, delays, or problems in your recovery plan. For example, you may find that restoring takes longer than expected, or some staff don’t know their roles.

• Update contact details and responsibilities so that when people leave jobs or change roles, you make sure your recovery plan always lists the right contacts and makes it clear who is responsible for what during a disaster.

Integrating testing into your business continuity plan ensures your organisation stays resilient, even as IT systems change.

Common mistakes people make during disaster recovery planning

While building your plan, you should avoid these common mistakes…

Relying on a single backup: Always keep multiple, redundant copies.

Failing to document processes: Staff must have step-by-step instructions to follow.

Neglecting non-IT processes: A strong business continuity plan includes logistics, supply chains, and customer communications as well as IT recovery.

Not testing often enough: A plan that looks good on paper may fail in practice.

And there you have it!

Disasters, whether technological or environmental, can (and will) strike without warning. But a carefully designed disaster recovery plan can make sure that your business can survive and recover, protecting both your data and your reputation. By integrating IT safeguards such as server backups, cloud-based failover systems, and staff training into a wider business continuity plan, you’ll not only reduce downtime but also strengthen customer trust!

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