Certified: The CISM Prepcast

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A disaster recovery plan provides a structured method for restoring IT systems, applications, and infrastructure following a disruptive event. Its main purpose is to support business continuity efforts by minimizing both downtime and the loss of critical data. This plan outlines how the organization will reestablish essential technology services in a coordinated and prioritized manner. Recovery efforts must be aligned with broader business goals and must adhere to recovery time and recovery point objectives defined during business impact analysis. In many industries, the existence of a current and tested disaster recovery plan is not just a best practice but a requirement for meeting regulatory expectations and passing audits.
A disaster recovery plan differs from other types of response documents by focusing specifically on IT system restoration rather than full business process continuation. It works alongside the business continuity plan, which focuses on keeping the business operational during disruption, and the incident response plan, which addresses immediate threat containment. All three plans must be tightly coordinated to ensure that technical restoration activities, operational workflows, and communication protocols are unified. While the DRP is concerned with infrastructure, applications, and data recovery, the BCP helps manage the broader functional impacts, and the IRP often triggers the activation of the DRP when a cyberattack or outage results in serious IT disruption.
Identifying which systems and assets are most critical is a foundational step in disaster recovery planning. Outputs from the business impact analysis should guide this effort, highlighting which systems must be recovered first based on operational importance. Systems should be classified by how essential they are to finance, compliance, and day-to-day operations. This classification includes not just physical servers but also databases, software applications, internal networks, and externally hosted cloud environments. System ownership and interdependencies should be clearly documented, along with acceptable downtime for each resource. These priorities must be determined using established RTO and RPO values to ensure recovery sequencing aligns with business needs.
Defining clear recovery objectives allows for focused planning and appropriate resource allocation. Recovery time objectives represent the maximum amount of time that each system can be offline without causing unacceptable harm. Recovery point objectives indicate how much data loss is tolerable, measured in minutes or hours. Both RTOs and RPOs must be realistic and achievable with current or planned capabilities. Objectives should be formally documented, approved by leadership, and revisited periodically. As systems evolve or business processes change, these recovery targets may need to be revised to ensure that they continue to reflect actual risk tolerances and operational requirements.
Choosing the right recovery strategies and supporting technologies is key to executing the disaster recovery plan effectively. Recovery site options include cold sites, which offer basic infrastructure but no preloaded systems; warm sites, which provide partially configured environments; and hot sites, which can host near-instant failover. Organizations may rely on on-premise recovery systems, hybrid models, or fully cloud-native environments, depending on their architecture and resilience needs. Tools for data backup and replication must be able to meet RPO targets consistently and reliably. Additional technologies such as failover systems, load balancers, and redundancy mechanisms should be considered. Each option must be evaluated based on cost, speed of activation, scalability, and implementation complexity to ensure the chosen strategy meets both budgetary and risk requirements.
A well-organized disaster recovery plan document is essential for smooth execution under stress. The document should begin by stating its purpose, scope, foundational assumptions, and key contacts. It must include detailed, step-by-step procedures for recovering each high-priority system, including specific roles and team assignments. Communication protocols should also be defined, showing how coordination will occur with the business continuity and incident response teams. Supporting documentation—such as network diagrams, system inventories, and external vendor contact information—should be included in appendices. This level of detail ensures that technical teams can act confidently and quickly, even if key personnel are unavailable or if operations must shift to an alternate site.
Disaster recovery roles must be clearly assigned to ensure command, coordination, and accountability. A disaster recovery coordinator should be appointed to lead plan activation and oversee recovery progress. Individual leads for systems, infrastructure, and cloud environments must be designated within IT, along with specific liaisons responsible for business coordination, logistics, and communication. To maintain operational continuity, backups should be identified for all essential roles, and those individuals should be trained to step in if needed. Contact information must be kept current, and on-call schedules should be updated and distributed regularly to ensure a quick and coordinated response when a disaster strikes.
Disaster recovery planning must be embedded within broader IT operations and governance to remain effective. The plan must align with ongoing change management and patching processes so that documented recovery procedures reflect the current state of production systems. When systems are added, reconfigured, or decommissioned, disaster recovery documentation must be updated accordingly. Integration with IT dashboards allows for real-time visibility into DR readiness and helps inform overall risk management reporting. Cybersecurity considerations must also be integrated into recovery procedures to ensure that restoration processes do not reintroduce vulnerabilities or bypass detection mechanisms during system restoration.
Testing the disaster recovery plan is essential for ensuring its feasibility and building team readiness. A variety of test types should be used, including tabletop discussions to evaluate processes, partial failovers to validate specific components, and full-scale simulations to test end-to-end recovery capabilities. During these tests, it is critical to assess whether the team can meet recovery time and point objectives under realistic conditions. Backups, system configurations, and data integrity should be thoroughly tested to identify gaps or weaknesses. All test results should be documented, and any issues uncovered must be addressed through corrective actions. Lessons learned from each test cycle should be used to improve tools, refine workflows, and prepare teams for real-world activation.
Maintaining the disaster recovery plan requires ongoing commitment and integration into IT governance. The plan should be formally reviewed at least once per year, or immediately following major system upgrades, organizational changes, or third-party transitions. Hardware, software, and cloud service listings must be verified for accuracy, along with all documented dependencies. Contact lists and support contracts must be checked and updated to ensure swift action during activation. Regulatory or contractual requirements related to disaster recovery should be continuously monitored and incorporated into plan updates. The maintenance of the plan should be part of the broader IT and enterprise risk governance framework, ensuring that disaster recovery remains an active, reliable, and auditable capability across the organization.
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