Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery planning establishes recovery time objectives specifying how quickly systems must be restored and recovery point objectives specifying acceptable data loss. It includes backup restoration procedures and alternate infrastructure.

Plans should be tested through actual restoration exercises.

Alternative Names:

DR, Technology Recovery

Why it Matters?

The objectives are what make a plan meaningful, and organizations frequently state aggressive targets without testing whether they can be met. A recovery time objective of four hours that has never been validated through an actual restoration is aspirational. Testing also surfaces the common failure where backups exist but restoration fails, which is discovered only when restoration is attempted under pressure.

Frequently Confused with

Related terms

Frequently asked questions

What are recovery objectives?

What are recovery objectives?

Recovery time objective specifies how quickly systems must be restored, and recovery point objective specifies how much data loss is acceptable.

Why test restoration?

Why test restoration?

Because backups frequently exist while restoration fails, which is discovered only when attempted, ideally in a test rather than an actual event.