Business resilience guide
What Is IT Disaster Recovery?
Learn how backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, recovery objectives, testing, and incident response fit together.
- Plain-language guidance
- Operational considerations
- Evidence over product claims
Guide section 1
Disaster recovery restores business technology services
IT disaster recovery is the coordinated process for restoring systems, data, access, networks, applications, cloud services, and dependencies after disruption. A useful plan identifies business priorities, responsible people, recovery order, required credentials, vendors, communication, and validation—not only where backup files are stored.
Guide section 2
Backup, disaster recovery, and continuity are connected but different
Backup creates recoverable copies. Disaster recovery restores technology services. Business continuity addresses how the organization continues critical work while normal systems, facilities, people, or suppliers are disrupted. The three should share priorities and assumptions.
Guide section 3
Recovery objectives must be tested
Recovery point objective estimates acceptable data loss in time. Recovery time objective estimates how quickly a service should be restored. Architecture, staffing, dependencies, scale, security, and testing determine whether those targets are realistic.
Frequently asked questions
What Is IT Disaster Recovery? FAQ
Is cloud backup the same as disaster recovery?
No. Cloud or offsite backup provides copies, while disaster recovery includes the systems, dependencies, access, infrastructure, procedures, priorities, people, and validation required to restore an operating service.
How often should disaster recovery be tested?
Testing frequency should reflect business impact, change rate, contractual or regulatory requirements, architecture, and risk. Different tests can validate files, systems, applications, communications, decision procedures, and full recovery scenarios.
How does ransomware affect disaster recovery?
Ransomware recovery must coordinate protected copies with containment, investigation, identity security, evidence preservation, clean restoration, validation, communication, legal and insurance requirements, and prevention of reinfection.
Apply the guidance
Assess the current environment and define the next step
Level 4 can help translate the topic into scoped responsibilities, evidence, remediation, and an accountable operating plan.