IT Disaster Recovery Plan
In the event of unexpected disruptions, a strong (and recently tested) IT disaster recovery plan is critical for maintaining business operations.
At CyPro, our team of resilience experts make sure that your company is ready to bounce back from IT related disasters swiftly and effectively.
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What is an IT Disaster Recovery Plan?
An IT disaster recovery plan is a structured and documented method for recovering IT systems and data in the case of a disaster.
Whether the disruption is caused by natural disasters, human error, hardware failure or cyber attacks, business continuity and disaster recovery planning can help prepare you for the worst case scenario. This planning process involves identifying critical IT assets, establishing recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs), and developing detailed procedures to minimise downtime and data loss.
Business continuity and disaster recovery planning work together to ensure that the organisation can not only withstand the initial impact of an incident but also maintain essential services and business operations while recovery efforts are carried out. An IT disaster recovery plan reduces the financial and reputational damage associated with downtime, enabling you to resume normal operations quickly and efficiently.
What's Included?
Risk & Impact Test
We evaluate potential threats and identify critical IT assets, helping you understand where failures would have the greatest impact on your operations.
Recovery Objectives
We define realistic Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), helping you prioritise systems by acceptable downtime and data loss.
Recovery Design
We assess your existing setup and recommend solutions such as replication, failover and cloud backup to ensure rapid restoration of services.
Continuity Integration
Your IT disaster recovery plan is aligned with overall business continuity planning, ensuring that essential functions can operate during an incident.
Detailed Runbooks
We create comprehensive, step-by-step guides covering backup processes, failover protocols and data restoration, enabling swift recovery actions.
Regular Testing
We run simulations and rehearsals of recovery scenarios, identifying any gaps in the plan and making improvements to boost resilience.
Challenges Addressed by an IT Disaster Recovery Plan
Data Loss
Unexpected interruptions may result in data loss, harming a company’s finances and reputation. Secure data backups are part of our IT disaster recovery plan, reducing the impacts on business operations.
Downtime
Extended downtime can severely impact your reputation, revenue, and result in regulatory fines. Our IT disaster recovery plan ensures quick restoration of critical IT to enable your team get back to business-as-usual as soon as possible.
Inadequate Planning
Many businesses lack the specialist expertise internally that are necessary to test IT disaster recovery plans. Our resilience experts will analyse your systems, implement best practices and make sure you’re ready to tackle potential threats.
Compliance Requirements
Strict compliance standards for business continuity and data recovery exist in several industries. Our IT disaster recovery plan complies with regulatory standards, so your company stays secure and resilient while adhering to all compliance requirements.
Data Loss
Unexpected interruptions may result in data loss, harming a company’s finances and reputation. Secure data backups are part of our IT disaster recovery plan, reducing the impacts on business operations.
Downtime
Extended downtime can severely impact your reputation, revenue, and result in regulatory fines. Our IT disaster recovery plan ensures quick restoration of critical IT to enable your team get back to business-as-usual as soon as possible.
Inadequate Planning
Many businesses lack the specialist expertise internally that are necessary to test IT disaster recovery plans. Our resilience experts will analyse your systems, implement best practices and make sure you’re ready to tackle potential threats.
Compliance Requirements
Strict compliance standards for business continuity and data recovery exist in several industries. Our IT disaster recovery plan complies with regulatory standards, so your company stays secure and resilient while adhering to all compliance requirements.
What Our Clients Say
Benefits of an IT Disaster Recovery Plan
Whether your goal is to limit downtime, protect sensitive data, or meet regulations, our IT disaster recovery plans provide the resilience needed to run securely during crises.
Maintain Client Services
Effective IT disaster recovery planning ensures you can continue to provide your services to your clients, even when systems and business processes are put under stress.
Avoid Financial Loss
By rapidly recovering IT systems, businesses can avoid prolonged outages that directly impact sales, transactions or service delivery. This prevents lost revenue, avoids penalties from SLA (Service Level Agreement) breaches and reduces the risk of expensive ad hoc fixes.
Rapid Recovery
Our recovery methodology is built to minimise recovery time, guaranteeing prompt restoration of business critical systems / applications and therefore minimise expensive downtime.
Protect Revenue
Rather than making large investments in internal recovery teams and infrastructure, our IT disaster recovery planning offers you a cost-effective, professional service that guarantees the robustness of your IT systems.
Build Scalable IT
Regardless of the size or nature of your company, our IT disaster recovery plans are specifically designed to adapt and grow alongside your organisation. As your your technological requirements evolve, our tailored plans ensure that your disaster recovery strategy remains relevant.
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Case Study: UK Financial Services Provider
Client Challenge
A UK financial services provider faced a significant critical system outage following a recent infrastructure migration.
Their IT environment had become increasingly complex, and without a formal disaster recovery plan it left them exposed to the risk of significant operational downtime in the event of an unforeseen disaster.
The client needed to establish a comprehensive disaster recovery plan to safeguard critical financial data, ensure regulatory compliance and maintain business operations during an emergency.
Our Approach
To address these challenges, CyPro delivered a tailored IT disaster recovery plan that ensured minimal downtime and a quick recovery, including:
- Senior vCISO: Providing strategic cyber security oversight and project leadership capabilities
- Disaster Recovery Architect: Technical resource with extensive experience in disaster recovery planning in the specific vendor product the client was experiencing issues with.
- Business Resilience Manager: Expert in business continuity planning, this resource helped establish broader business processes that facilitated back-ups and technical fail-over procedures.
Our approach included:
- Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan: Defined key processes and responsibilities for disaster scenarios, to enable a coordinated response to minimise downtime and data loss.
- Business Impact Analysis: Conducted a detailed analysis to identify critical systems and prioritise recovery time objectives & recovery point objectives to safeguard processes.
- Backup & Redundancy Implementation: Integrated secure off-site backups and redundant systems to ensure that critical data can be quickly recovered.
- Disaster Recovery Testing: Regularly tested and updated the disaster recovery plan through simulations, ensuring the team were prepared for a real disaster
- Compliance & Documentation: Developed detailed documentation to meet industry regulations to ensure the client remained compliant and minimised risk of legal repercussions.
Value Delivered
Business Continuity
Established a comprehensive IT disaster recovery plan that ensured client operations could continue with minimal disruption.
Risk Mitigation
Data loss, financial impact and downtime risks were reduced, giving stakeholders confidence in the company’s resilience to disaster scenarios.
Operational Resilience
Enhanced the company’s ability to recover critical systems and data quickly going forward, ensuring customer trust and business continuity.
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Who Needs an IT Disaster Recovery Plan?
Operational resilience cannot be sustained without a strong disaster recovery strategy, which is essential for protecting confidential data, guaranteeing regulatory compliance, and preventing costly company downtime.
- Small To Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs): Data loss, cyber attacks and system failures are risks that affect all businesses, regardless of size but they can be disproportionately impactful for growing businesses like SMBs. To reduce these risks and guarantee continuity, a disaster recovery strategy is necessary.
- Highly Regulated Industries: There are strict regulations governing the uptime and continuous access to personal data in sectors including healthcare, finance, insurance and law. A disaster recovery plan safeguards against costly fines while assisting in ensuring compliance.
- Organisations With Critical IT Infrastructure: Businesses in manufacturing, telecommunications, and technology that mostly rely on IT systems for daily operations require quick recovery to prevent costly downtime.
- Educational Institutions: A significant amount of intellectual property and personal data is kept in universities, schools and other educational institutions. Maintaining academic services and securing sensitive data requires prompt recovery from disruptions that inevitably occur in these environments.
- E-commerce & Online Businesses: Organisations that run predominantly online such cloud service providers and e-commerce platforms, must recover fast to prevent revenue loss, loss of users and reputational damage.
- Government Agencies: A lot of sensitive citizen data is handled by public sector organisations. Maintaining public safety, essential services and national security requires a strong recovery plan.
- Non-Profits & Charities: Despite their potential lack of resources, nonprofit organisations manage sensitive financial and personal information. Having a disaster recovery plan in place ensures continuous delivery of services often to vulnerable customers such as the homeless, elderly and those at financial risk.
Who Doesn’t Need an IT Disaster Recovery Plan?
- Small Businesses With Minimal Digital Infrastructure: Companies that rely less on technology and run primarily offline, such as local shop that doesn’t handle a lot of data, might not require a comprehensive IT disaster recovery plan.
- Large FTSE Enterprises With Internal Resilience Expertise: There may be less need for extra external plans in certain major organisations because they have their own internal expertise and disaster recovery processes. Recovery plans are still absolutely necessary but these organisations may choose to use their own internal teams instead of outside providers.
Our Approach
Every company operates differently and as such, has different requirements when it comes to business continuity and disaster recovery.
Resilience Risk Assessment
To find vulnerabilities and possible worst-case situations in your IT infrastructure, we start with a comprehensive resilience risk assessment.
Tech Specific Recovery
Our team works closely with your internal stakeholders to design a recovery strategy tailored to your business objectives, compliance standards and specific technologies in use.
Backups & Redundancy
To ensure the safety of your critical data and systems, we set up overlapping secure backup systems that ensure redundancy is built into business processes from the ground up.
Robust Testing
To keep pace with the evolving threat landscape and technological advancements, our IT disaster recovery plans are routinely tested to ensure their effectiveness. These plans are continually reviewed and updated to address new cyber threats and adapt to the changing business needs of your organisation.
Rapid Recovery
Our resilience experts takes charge of executing the IT disaster recovery plan whenever a crisis arises, focusing on minimising downtime and swiftly restoring business-critical services. With their specialised expertise, they work efficiently to manage the situation, ensuring that disruption is kept to an minimum.
Secure your business.
Elevate your security, accelerate your growth. We take care of cyber security for high-growth companies, at every stage of their journey.
Get in Touch
Secure your business.
Elevate your security, accelerate your growth. We take care of cyber security for high-growth companies, at every stage of their journey.
Get in TouchYour Team
Rob McBride
Rob is a Founding Partner at CyPro and a highly experienced CISO. Beginning his career with a successful tenure at Deloitte, Rob has since amassed a wealth of experience, notably serving as a cyber security advisor to the UK government and spearheading cloud security transformations for several global banks.
At CyPro, Rob leads the managed service business line, working extensively across multiple sectors including telecommunications, technology, higher education, travel, and retail. He is passionate about equipping small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with robust cyber security strategies to fuel their growth.
Additional Consultants
Robert is a project management specialist in cyber risk and resilience, helping clients navigate complexity, uncertainty, and digital risk to achieve their objectives. With expertise at the intersection of governance, enterprise risk, operational resilience, and compliance, he provides strategic advisory, troubleshooting, and hands-on project management support.
With over 30 years of experience across business transformation, M&A programs, and regulatory compliance, he has worked across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. His background spans banking, financial services, and healthcare, with a focus on risk and resilience since 2002, including roles in business continuity, SOX compliance, and pandemic planning.
Robert has supported a diverse range of clients, including Grant Thornton, NHS England, Johnson & Johnson, Oracle, and Dun & Bradstreet, delivering interim, fractional, and project-based solutions tailored to specific client needs.
Luke is a seasoned Senior SOC Engineer with extensive experience in designing and managing complex SOC environments across different sectors.
As a specialist in automated detection rule development, Luke builds sophisticated detection mechanisms that enable real-time identification of potential threats. His expertise in crafting tailored SIEM rules and integrating advanced threat intelligence allows for proactive threat detection, significantly reducing response times and improving the overall security posture of the businesses he supports.
With a passion for continuous improvement, Luke also works on refining detection capabilities, ensuring that the SOC evolves alongside the latest cyber threat trends and technological advancements.
James is a leading expert in the policy debates in data protection, he is regularly invited to address conferences in the UK and internationally. He specialises Data Protection Officer services and believes in making compliance part of business operations, not a legal tick box exercise.
He is also an Director in the Deloitte UK Privacy team and a Director at Deloitte Legal. At Deloitte he works directly on client delivery as well as contributing to the thought development in the area.
For over 10 years James lead the BBC’s Information Policy and Compliance Department, in the BBC’s Legal section. There he oversaw the operation of the Corporation’s systems for compliance with the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts. Before he left the BBC he led the development thinking around privacy and data governance for a future digital BBC, as it developed its big data capability. Additionally he provided expert advice on media and privacy and lobbying on the proposed EU GDPR.
James worked in broadcasting, mainly for the BBC, for over 30 years. Before joining the Legal Division he was a programme maker and spent much of his time in political journalism. He edited many of the BBC’s Political and Parliamentary programmes.
He has an MBA specialising in strategy. He is a member of: the International Association of Privacy Professionals (former European Advisor Board); the Strategic Planning Society (former Chairman); the Radio Academy (former Trustee); BAFTA. He is on the editorial board of Data Protection Law & Policy.
Kailey is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Digital Operational Resilience Act Trained Professional (DORATPro) with extensive experience in developing and implementing security governance frameworks and data protection policies. Adept at aligning information security initiatives with regulatory requirements and business objectives, ensuring compliance with ISO 27001, GDPR, DORA, and Cyber Essentials Plus.
With a proven track record in transforming information security postures, expertise spans insurance, financial services, managed IT services, and the public sector. Kailey is skilled in building Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), managing third-party risks, and enhancing organisational resilience through strategic advisory, policy development, and security training programs.
She is recognised for a collaborative and solutions-driven approach, fostering trust and teamwork to drive effective security transformations. Passionate about implementing tailored security frameworks that safeguard digital assets while supporting business growth and operational resilience.
Comparison: IT Disaster Recovery Plan vs ISO 27001
When choosing between an IT disaster recovery plan and ISO 27001, it’s crucial to understand their scope.
IT Disaster Recovery Plan
- Purpose: A structured approach to restoring IT systems, data, and infrastructure following a disruptive event such as cyber-attacks, hardware failures, or natural disasters.
- Scope: Covers backup and recovery strategies, system redundancies, failover mechanisms, and emergency response procedures. Typically focuses on business continuity from an IT perspective.
- Cost: Can vary significantly depending on the complexity of IT systems and the level of redundancy required.
- Who Is This Best For? Businesses that rely heavily on IT systems for operations and need a defined strategy to ensure minimal downtime and data loss in the event of a disaster.
ISO 27001
- Purpose: A globally recognised standard for information security management systems (ISMS), providing a comprehensive framework to manage risks related to information security.
- Scope: Encompasses data protection, risk assessment, policy development, security controls, and compliance requirements. Disaster recovery is included as part of broader business continuity planning.
- Cost: Higher upfront investment due to certification, audit requirements, and ongoing compliance, but provides long-term security benefits and regulatory alignment.
- Who Is This Best For? Organisations that need to demonstrate security compliance to stakeholders, clients, or regulators and want a structured, internationally recognised approach to managing cyber risks.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Why is it important to have a disaster recovery plan?
An IT disaster recovery plan is essential for ensuring that businesses can recover quickly from unexpected disruptions, such as cyberattacks, natural disasters, system failures, or human errors. Without a well-structured disaster recovery strategy, companies risk significant downtime, data loss, financial setbacks, and reputational damage.
When an organisation experiences an IT failure, every minute of downtime translates into lost revenue, reduced productivity, and potential breaches of compliance regulations. A disaster recovery plan helps minimise these risks by providing a structured approach to restoring operations efficiently and securely.
Beyond financial and operational concerns, a well-prepared recovery strategy also helps businesses maintain customer trust and regulatory compliance. Many industries—such as finance, healthcare, and legal services—have strict regulations requiring organisations to demonstrate their ability to protect and restore data following an incident. By proactively implementing a disaster recovery plan, businesses can avoid costly legal consequences and regulatory fines.
Our IT disaster recovery services ensure that your business remains resilient, secure, and prepared for any unexpected disruptions. We specialise in business continuity planning, disaster recovery strategy development, and real-world testing to help organisations reduce downtime and restore operations quickly.
- How to write an IT disaster recovery plan?
Developing an effective IT disaster recovery plan requires careful assessment, preparation, and continuous improvement. Organisations must follow a structured process to ensure their IT systems can recover swiftly from disruptions. The key steps in creating a disaster recovery plan include:
1. Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis
Start by identifying the most critical IT systems, applications, and data within your organisation. Assess potential risks, such as cyberattacks, hardware failures, power outages, or natural disasters, and evaluate their potential impact on business operations. Conducting a business impact analysis (BIA) helps determine acceptable downtime limits and recovery priorities.2. Defining Recovery Objectives
Establish two key objectives for your disaster recovery plan:
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO): The maximum allowable downtime before business operations must be restored.
• Recovery Point Objective (RPO): The maximum acceptable data loss measured in time (e.g., no more than 4 hours of data loss).Clearly defining these metrics ensures that your organisation can prioritise system recovery based on business needs.
3. Developing a Response Strategy
Create tailored recovery strategies for different disaster scenarios, ensuring that each plan aligns with your company’s size, infrastructure, and regulatory requirements. This may include:
• Data backup and redundancy measures to prevent critical data loss.
• Failover systems that allow automatic switching to backup infrastructure.
• Cloud-based recovery solutions to ensure remote access to business-critical applications.4. Implementing Redundancy and Backup Solutions
Ensure that your business has multiple layers of data protection, including off-site backups, cloud storage, and real-time replication of critical systems. Using automated backup solutions and geographically distributed data centres significantly reduces the risk of losing valuable information.5. Documenting Disaster Recovery Protocols
A disaster recovery plan must be thoroughly documented to ensure that IT teams and key personnel can execute recovery procedures efficiently during a crisis. The documentation should include:
• Step-by-step instructions for restoring IT systems.
• Team member roles and responsibilities during a disaster.
• Communication protocols for notifying employees, clients, and stakeholders.6. Testing, Training, and Continuous Improvement
A disaster recovery plan should not be static; it needs to be tested regularly through simulation exercises and real-world drills. Frequent updates are necessary to accommodate changes in business operations, technology infrastructure, and emerging threats. Employee training also ensures that all stakeholders understand their roles in the recovery process.Our team provides comprehensive disaster recovery consulting, guiding businesses through risk assessments, strategy development, and real-world testing to ensure their IT systems are resilient and recovery-ready.
- What is included in an IT disaster recovery plan?
An organisation’s comprehensive plan for recovering from unexpected IT disruptions is known as an IT disaster recovery plan. It ensures significant data, applications, and infrastructure remain accessible.
The plan outlines specific processes for swiftly restarting operations, ensures routine backups of critical systems and data, and identifies critical IT assets that require protection.
It also addresses team responsibilities, crisis communication procedures, and continuous testing and revisions to guarantee the plan stays updated with emerging technologies.
- How often should an IT disaster recovery plan be tested?
An IT disaster recovery plan should be tested at least once a year, but more frequent testing—such as quarterly or biannual reviews—is recommended for organisations with high security and compliance requirements. Regular testing ensures that the recovery process is effective, up to date, and aligned with evolving business operations and technological changes.
Testing can take several forms, including:
• Tabletop exercises, where teams walk through the disaster recovery plan to evaluate its effectiveness.
• Simulation testing, where real-world disaster scenarios are recreated to assess system resilience.
• Full-scale failover testing, where backup systems are activated to ensure they function as expected.If an organisation undergoes major IT changes, such as cloud migration, software upgrades, or infrastructure expansion, the disaster recovery plan should be updated and re-tested immediately. Businesses that fail to test their plans risk slow recovery times, data loss, and operational disruptions when an actual disaster occurs.
Our disaster recovery consultants provide end-to-end testing, validation, and continuous improvement of recovery strategies, ensuring your business is fully prepared for any IT emergency.
- What is the difference between business continuity and disaster recovery?
While closely related, business continuity and disaster recovery serve different but complementary purposes.
Business continuity (BC) is a proactive strategy focused on ensuring that an organisation can continue operating with minimal disruption in the event of an incident. It involves risk management, alternative work arrangements, and crisis communication planning to keep operations running smoothly.
Disaster recovery (DR) is a reactive approach that focuses on restoring IT systems, data, and infrastructure after a disaster occurs. It specifically addresses how organisations recover lost data, repair damaged systems, and resume IT operations following cyberattacks, natural disasters, or technical failures.
In essence, business continuity ensures the organisation can function despite an incident, while disaster recovery ensures that IT systems can be restored after an incident.
A robust IT disaster recovery plan is a crucial component of a business continuity strategy. Our team helps organisations develop integrated BC/DR plans, ensuring they can both sustain operations and recover IT systems efficiently.
- How can small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) implement an effective disaster recovery plan?
Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) assume that IT disaster recovery is only feasible for large enterprises, but cost-effective solutions are available to ensure business continuity and data protection without a massive investment.
To implement an effective disaster recovery plan on a budget, SMBs should:
1. Prioritise critical systems and data – Identify which IT assets are essential to daily operations and focus recovery efforts on them.
2. Use cloud-based disaster recovery solutions – Cloud storage and backup services offer affordable, scalable options for data protection.
3. Automate backups – Implement regular, automated backups to prevent data loss in case of system failure or cyber incidents.
4. Leverage disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) – Many managed IT service providers offer DRaaS, providing enterprise-grade disaster recovery solutions without the high infrastructure costs.
5. Conduct basic testing and staff training – Even with limited resources, running periodic tabletop exercises ensures that employees understand their roles in the recovery process.We offer customised disaster recovery solutions designed specifically for SMBs, helping them build cost-effective, scalable recovery plans that protect critical IT assets without exceeding their budget.
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