Demystifying Disaster Recovery Plan and Related FAQ’s

Demystifying Disaster Recovery Plan and Related FAQ's | Zmanda

What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A disaster recovery plan (DRP), disaster recovery implementation plan, or an IT disaster recovery plan is a document that helps an organisation handle unexpected incidents, such as cyber-attacks, natural disasters, power outages. They have the potential to shut down a company’s IT systems and hinder its overall operations. 

A DRP aims to get your business up and running as quickly as possible during a disaster or data breach. With an effective disaster recovery plan, there is less chance of you losing out on profits for too long. Also, it should have backups set in place to prevent sensitive data (social security numbers or credit card information) from getting compromised.

Why is a Disaster Recovery Plan important?

Data loss, downtime, and tech outages are some of the new horror stories that even the top companies are going through nowadays. Whenever a disaster strikes in a company, the engineering teams rush to repair the damage, and on the other hand, PR teams work overtime to restore customer confidence. 

Don’t you think it is a time-consuming and expensive effort?
Of course, it is!

Top 4 Benefits of the Disaster Recovery plan:

  • Minimising the recovery time & possible delays
  • Train employees about safety procedures in case of an emergency
  • Safeguards financial data and improves security
  • Describe operational alternatives well in advance
Steps for DRP | Zmanda

Disaster Recovery Plan and Business Continuity Plan – Are they Correlated?

Business continuity refers to how a company keeps running in the event of a natural or man-made disruption. On the other hand, a DRP is concerned with restoring normal business-critical operations after a disaster. It can be said that a DRP is more focused, and it is a specific part of a wider business continuity plan(BCP).

Pro tip-It is most effective to develop information technology (IT) disaster recovery plan in conjunction with the business continuity plan (BCP).

Correlation between BCP and DRP | Zmanda

Who prepares the disaster recovery plan?


Whether you maintain your disaster recovery plan internally or outsource it to a managed service provider, or use any disaster recovery plan template, the document must contain complete, accurate, and up-to-date information on your company’s IT activities. The top management, IT management, human resources and finance specialists, and the security department are collectively responsible for outlining, implementing, testing, and maintaining the disaster recovery plan.

What specific ways can disaster recovery plans get tested?
Businesses must test their disaster recovery plan regularly to ensure they are well-prepared to deal with any occurrence that could disrupt their vital business processes. It validates the disaster recovery program and BCP, helps understand the shortcomings, and provides the quickest solutions before they deteriorate and disrupt the ability to re-establish the key business operations. 

  • DRP Review: It is conducted by the team who made the plan and involves team members reading the entire DRP plan to uncover any flaws.
  • Checklist Method: It ensures that all the necessary elements required for disaster recovery are considered, thereby facilitating consistency.
  • Structured walkthrough: As the name suggests, it allows us to walk through the proposed recovery procedures in a structured manner to identify the vulnerabilities. 
  • Simulation test: Here a disaster is simulated, and then the team is required to respond to the disaster as directed by the DRP to ensure the effectiveness of the DRP.
  • Parallel processing: It usually entails recovering critical processing components at a different computing facility followed by data restoration from a previous backup.

Way Forward with Zmanda 
With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, many businesses experienced a form of disaster across the globe. It has exposed gaps in enterprise disaster recovery and business continuity planning. The targeted areas are networking, remote access, SaaS applications, and ransomware. Now is the time, to plan your disaster strategy by thinking about goals, executing essential audits, planning for contingencies, or engaging with a third-party vendor, if needed, to avoid costly service disruptions. 

Get started with Zmanda’s cloud-native disaster recovery plan for a one-size-fits-all solution. With Zmanda, you get a perfect backup and a recovery solution at right price.


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