A disaster recovery policy is a documented process for how an organization will recover and restore partially or completely interrupted critical functions after a disaster or emergency. Having a thorough and tested disaster recovery policy is crucial for minimizing disruption to operations and ensuring business continuity. There are several key elements that should be included when documenting a disaster recovery policy.
Goals and Objectives
The disaster recovery policy should clearly outline the overall goals and objectives for disaster recovery planning. This includes defining the scope and priorities for recovery, such as the most critical systems, applications, databases, and other assets that should be restored first in the event of a disruption. The policy should designate roles and responsibilities for executing on the disaster recovery plan and have established recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives.
Risk Assessment
A thorough risk assessment should be conducted to identify potential threats, vulnerabilities, and impacts to operations. This evaluation can help determine disaster recovery priorities and strategies. The types of risks that should be considered include natural disasters, human errors, cyber attacks and security breaches, supply chain interruptions, and other probable incidents that could cause systems outages and data loss.
Incident Response
Procedures for incident response should be established for reacting to and managing disasters or emergencies when they occur. Response protocols such as notification trees, escalation procedures, and activation of recovery teams should be outlined. Emergency response guidelines help ensure issues are quickly reported and assessed, outages are contained, and appropriate parties are kept informed.
Recovery Strategies
Detailed strategies should be developed for how critical systems and data will be recovered following disaster scenarios. This could involve rebuilding onsite or activating alternative infrastructure such as offsite data centers, cloud services, or hybrid recovery solutions. Strategies should also designate backup methods, replication techniques, spares, redundancies, and alternate disaster recovery locations.
Recovery Plans
In-depth recovery plans should provide step-by-step instructions for restoring systems, applications, data, and connectivity. Plans should cover various scenarios from minor outages to major destruction and outline how assets will be prioritized for recovery based on criticality. Plans should also be validated through testing.
Order of Recovery
A sequence for system and data recovery should be defined. This typically prioritizes the most critical assets and infrastructure that are needed to resume urgent operations and provide core services for customers and stakeholders. Lower priority systems and data can be restored in later stages. The order of recovery should align with the recovery time objectives for critical resources.
Roles and Responsibilities
Roles and responsibilities should be assigned for executing on recovery strategies and plans. This includes disaster recovery teams, IT staff, end-users, executives, external vendors, and other stakeholders. Contact information for personnel and recovery service providers should also be documented. Defining roles helps establish accountability during the recovery process.
Communications Protocols
Procedures for internal and external communications should be established. This includes public relations plans, notifications to employees, contacting recovery vendors, and status updates to executives, customers, and other stakeholders. Clear communications help ensure effective coordination and management of issues during response and recovery efforts.
Testing and Exercises
Requirements and schedules for testing disaster recovery capabilities should be outlined. Testing helps validate recovery strategies and procedures to identify any gaps. Different types of exercises such as tabletops, simulations, and live tests should be conducted periodically to maintain a state of readiness.
Training and Awareness
Training programs should be developed to educate employees and stakeholders on disaster recovery plans and procedures. Awareness of recovery protocols promotes effective response during actual events. Training should be ongoing to accommodate staff changes and keep plans current.
Maintenance
The policy should outline schedules and procedures for maintaining and updating disaster recovery plans and procedures. Maintenance helps ensure plans stay relevant as assets, risks, and business objectives change over time. This includes conducting periodic reviews, incorporating lessons learned from tests or actual incidents, and refreshing outdated plans.
Cyber Incident Response
Specific incident response plans tailored to cyber attacks, data breaches, and other IT security incidents should be covered given increasing technology-related risks. This includes procedures for assessing, containing, eradicating malware, and restoring data or files from backup after cyber events.
Third Party Services
Many organizations leverage third party vendors for supplemental disaster recovery services and infrastructure. The roles and responsibilities of any outside vendors or partners should be clearly defined in the policy. This establishes accountability, coordinates efforts, and sets expectations for integrating with external providers.
Alternate Sites
Details on any alternate sites or facilities used for disaster recovery operations should be documented such as remote data centers, cloud infrastructure, backup office locations, and offsite IT services. Locations, capabilities, service levels, and activation procedures should be outlined for alternate recovery facilities.
Data Protection
Policies and procedures for replicating and backing up critical data to offsite locations should be established to enable retrieval of information for recovery activities. This includes encryption methods, media rotation frequencies, storage of sensitive data, and integrity checks to ensure backups are consistent and complete.
Priority Resources
An inventory of the most essential infrastructure, systems, applications, databases, and files should be created and aligned with recovery time objectives and priority levels for restoration. This helps ensure the most critical assets can be recovered quickly.
Specialized Equipment
Any specialized or replacement hardware required for recovery should be outlined such as emergency generators, computing equipment, networking devices, and telecom components. Arranging spare or replacement gear can accelerate recovery time.
Licenses and Contracts
Licenses, support contracts, and service level agreements needed for recovery operations should be maintained and accessible. This includes databases of license keys, vendor contact information, and contracted services to help mobilize resources.
Financial Planning
The potential financial impact of downtime and recovery operations should be analyzed. Cost estimates help obtain appropriate executive approval and budget. Estimated costs may include infrastructure, vendor services, overtime labor, legal implications, lost revenue, and other liabilities stemming from prolonged outages.
Documentation Format
The disaster recovery policy and procedures should utilize a consistent document format to facilitate use in stressful situations. This includes organized, simple, and easy to understand language along with visual elements like flowcharts and diagrams. Formatting promotes efficient execution of complex recovery processes.
Accessibility
The disaster recovery policy and supporting plans should be easily accessible to ensure availability during emergency situations. This involves secure online access, local shared drives, removable media, cloud storage, and offsite printed copies. Access must be user-friendly while also being properly secured.
Legal and Compliance
Relevant regulatory, legal, and compliance requirements should be addressed based on the organization’s industry and jurisdictions. This includes data privacy laws, financial regulations, contractual obligations, audit standards, and other binding disaster recovery provisions.
Integration
Disaster recovery policies and plans should align with related IT, business continuity, emergency response, and crisis management plans. Close coordination ensures unified and consistent strategies across these domains for dealing with major events and disruptions.
Table 1: Sample disaster recovery policy table of contents
| 1. Introduction | 8. Maintenance of Plans |
| 2. Goals and Objectives | 9. Awareness and Training |
| 3. Risk Assessment | 10. Testing and Exercises |
| 4. Recovery Strategies | 11. Cyber Incident Response |
| 5. Incident Response | 12. Third Party Services |
| 6. Roles and Responsibilities | 13. Alternate Sites |
| 7. Communications | 14. Data Protection |
Conclusion
Developing a robust disaster recovery policy is crucial for building organizational resilience against disruptions ranging from localized outages to full-scale disasters. The policy provides a documented framework for conducting recovery in an effective and controlled manner to restore normal operations as swiftly as possible. Key elements involve assessing risks, prioritizing critical assets, assigning responsibilities, developing detailed plans, testing capabilities, and establishing communications protocols. The disaster recovery policy sets the foundation for protecting an organization when faced with adverse events by outlining systematic processes to minimize impacts and regain continuity.