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Departmental disaster recovery planning

Disaster recovery planning involves the process, policies, and procedures that enable delivery of critical technical services to Indiana University in the event of natural or man-made disaster.

Disaster recovery (DR) is an integral part of the overall business continuity program . While business continuity is concerned with continuation of the business of the university, disaster recovery or information technology business continuity is focused on the continued operation and function of technology to support those business functions.

A disaster recovery program ensures the technology that supports the business of the university will continue to function after an event occurs. Which departments and offices should think about DR? Any that use any form of IT, including email, to conduct business.

The purpose of this document is to help departments form a disaster recovery plan. Many services hosted by university departments are key in conducting daily university business; as such, plans for these services to provide continued functionality in the event of disaster is paramount.

Developing your disaster recovery plan

We have provided a strategy template to use in developing your departmental disaster recovery plan. Prioritizing your services from most critical to least critical is key to developing a useful plan, which should c learly define the steps and equipment needed to bring these critical services back online.

These steps should include who to contact, where backup data is stored and where new equipment should be sourced from if replacement is required.

Storing your disaster recovery plan

Indiana University’s IU Ready service should be used for storing your DR plan and business continuity plan (BCP).

The IU Ready service, found on One.IU , helps university administration understand the resources and dependencies needed to help your department recover from a major disaster, and provides a centralized location for storing these documents in a secure off-site location.

Auditing your disaster recovery plan

Regulary auditing your DR plan to reflect changes in your services is important to ensure that those tasked with bringing these services back up are working with the correct information. Changes to services such as IP address, VLAN, Administrator access and firewall settings should be updated as soon as these changes are made to the system.

It is also important to audit access to the IU Ready plan and its documents to reflect changes in staffing, contact information, and administrative access. Outdated information in your DR plan could result in additional down time.

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How to Write a Disaster Recovery Plan + Template

Table of Contents

What is a disaster recovery plan?

Disaster recovery plan vs business continuity plan, what are the measures included in a disaster recovery plan, how to write a disaster recovery plan, disaster recovery plan template, disaster recovery plan examples, how secureframe can help your disaster recovery planning efforts.

• July 27, 2023

Anna Fitzgerald

Senior Content Marketing Manager at Secureframe

Cavan Leung

Senior Compliance Manager at Secureframe

A study found that only 54% of organizations have a company-wide disaster recovery plan in place. This percentage is even lower for government IT departments (36%) despite the proliferation of ransomware and other cyber threats. 

Not having a documented disaster recovery plan can seriously hamper an organization’s ability to recover lost data and restore its critical systems. This can result in significantly higher financial losses and reputational damage.

To help ensure your organization can recover from disaster as swiftly and easily as possible, learn what exactly a disaster recovery plan is and how to write one. Plus, find some examples and a template to help get you started.

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a document that outlines the procedures an organization will follow to recover and restore its critical systems, operations, and data after a disaster. Examples of disasters that may disrupt the continuity of product or service delivery are natural disasters, cyber attacks, hardware failures, and human errors. 

In planning for disaster recovery, what is the ultimate goal?

The ultimate goal of disaster recovery planning is to minimize the impact of a disaster, and ensure business continuity.

Having a disaster recovery plan in place that is well-designed and regularly maintained can help organizations:

• minimize downtime
• reduce financial losses
• protect critical data
• resume operations quickly 
• provide peace of mind for employees

A disaster recovery plan and business continuity plan both take a proactive approach to minimize the impact of a disaster before it occurs and may even be combined into a single document as a result. 

However, the key difference is that a disaster recovery plan focuses on limiting abnormal or inefficient system function by restoring it as quickly as possible after a disaster, whereas a business continuity plan focuses on limiting operational downtime by maintaining operations during a disaster. 

In other words, a disaster recovery strategy helps to ensure an organization returns to full functionality after a disaster occurs whereas a business continuity plan helps an organization to keep operating at some capacity during a disaster. That’s why organizations need to have both documents in place, or need to incorporate disaster recovery strategies as part of their overall business continuity plan. 

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How to Write a Business Continuity Plan & Why It’s Important for a SOC 2 Audit [+ Template]

Just as no two businesses are the same, no two disaster recovery plans are. However, they do typically include some common measures. These are detailed below.

• Data backup and recovery

A section of a DRP should be dedicated to data backup and recovery. This should list backup methods, frequency of backups, the storage locations, and the procedures for data restoration.

• Redundant systems and infrastructure

Another section may explain how the organization implements redundant systems and infrastructure to ensure high availability and minimize downtime if a disaster occurs. This may involve duplicating critical servers, network equipment, power supplies, and storage devices using clustering, load balancing, failover mechanisms, virtualization technologies, or other measures. 

Alternate worksite

A DRP may identify alternative worksites or recovery locations where the organization can operate if the primary site becomes inaccessible. This section should also define procedures and infrastructure needed to quickly transition operations to the identified alternate sites.

• Communication and notification

Another part of DRP may define communication protocols and notification procedures to ensure communication during and after a disaster. Protocols and procedures typically include:

• notifying employees, customers, vendors, and stakeholders about the disaster
• providing updates on recovery progress
• maintaining contact information for key personnel and emergency services

Recovery objectives

A DRP may set acceptable time frames for recovering systems and data in terms of recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). These objectives should be based on the criticality of systems and shape recovery strategies accordingly. 

• RTO : The maximum amount of downtime allowed
• RPO : The maximum loss of data accepted (measured in time)

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Writing and maintaining a disaster recovery plan requires collaboration and coordination among key stakeholders across an organization and can seem intimidating. Below we’ll outline the process step by step to help you get started. 

1. Define the plan’s objectives and scope

To start, define the objectives and scope of your disaster recovery plan.

Objectives may include:

• safeguarding employees’ lives and company assets
• making a financial and operational assessment
• securing data
• quickly recovering operations

Next, identify what and who the plan applies. Typically, assets utilized by employees and contractors acting on behalf of the company or accessing its applications, infrastructure, systems, or data fall within the scope of the disaster recovery plan. In this case, employees and contractors are required to review and accept the plan. 

2. Perform a risk assessment

Identify potential risks and vulnerabilities that could lead to a disaster, both internal and external to the organization. This should involve evaluating your reliance on external vendors and suppliers for critical services or resources and assessing their own disaster recovery capabilities to ensure they align with your organization's requirements.

3. Perform a business impact analysis

Next, determine the business functions, processes, systems, and data that are essential for your organization's operations. For each critical component, establish recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives. 

4. Define recovery measures and procedures

Define the appropriate measures and step-by-step procedures for disaster recovery based on the risks and business impact you identified. This includes identifying the individuals or teams responsible for recovery tasks, the resources required, and the order of recovery tasks.

As stated above, these recovery tasks may fall into the following categories:

• Alternative worksite

You may also want to outline emergency procedures. These are the actions that should be taken during and immediately after a disaster occurs, and may include evacuation plans and communication protocols and coordination with emergency services.

5. Conduct testing and training regularly

Regularly test the disaster recovery plan to ensure its effectiveness and identify any potential gaps or weaknesses. Conduct training sessions for employees to familiarize them with their roles and responsibilities during a disaster.

6. Review and update the plan regularly

Review and update the disaster recovery plan periodically to incorporate changes in technology, business operations, and potential risks. Ensure that contact information, system configurations, and other relevant details are up to date.

Use this template to kick off your disaster recovery planning and customize it based on your organization's specific risks and objectives.

Below you can find examples of disaster recovery strategies and procedures from disaster recovery plans created and maintained by universities and other organizations. This should help you in brainstorming and documenting your own recovery strategies and plans for different services, environments, and types of disasters. 

1. IT disaster recovery plan

Southern Oregon University has a comprehensive disaster recovery plan specifically for its IT services because they are so heavily relied upon by faculty, staff, and students. There are disaster recovery processes and procedures outlined for various IT services and infrastructure, including its data center, network infrastructure, enterprise systems, desktop hardware, client applications, classrooms, and labs. 

Some of the IT disaster recovery processes and procedures outlined in the plan are:

• Secure facility as necessary to prevent personnel injury and further damage to IT systems.
• Coordinate hardware and software replacement with vendors
• Verify operational ability of all equipment on-site in the affected area (servers, network equipment, ancillary equipment, etc.). If equipment is not operational, initiate actions to repair or replace as needed.
• If the data center is not operational or recoverable, contact personnel responsible for the alternate data center and take necessary steps to ready the facility.
• Retrieve most recent on-site or off-site back-up media for previous three back-ups. Prepare back-up media for transfer to primary or secondary datacenter, as determined during the initial assessment.

2. AWS disaster recovery plan

AWS walks through disaster recovery options in the cloud in this whitepaper . It explains four primary approaches to cloud disaster recovery:

• Backup and restor e: Backup the data, infrastructure, configuration, and application code of your primary Region and redeploy them in the recovery Region. This is the least costly and complex approach. 
• Pilot light : Replicate your data from one Region to another and provision a copy of your core workload infrastructure so that you can quickly provision a full scale production environment by switching on and scaling out your application servers if a disaster occurs. This simplifies recovery at the time of a disaster and also minimizes the ongoing cost of disaster recovery by “switching off” some resources until they’re needed.
• Warm standby : Create and maintain a scaled down, but fully functional, copy of your production environment in another Region. This decreases the time to recovery compared to the pilot light approach, but is more costly because it requires more active resources.  
• Multi-site active/active : Run your workload simultaneously in multiple Regions so users are able to access your workload in any of the Regions in which it is deployed, which reduces your recovery time to near zero for most disasters. This is the most costly and complex approach. 

3. Data center disaster recovery plan

The University of Iowa also has a comprehensive disaster recovery plan , which includes several processes and procedures for recovering from a disaster that affects its data center. Some of these include: 

• Have large tarps or plastic sheeting available in the data center ready to cover sensitive electronic equipment in case the building is damaged due to natural disasters like tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes.
• If replacement equipment is required, make every attempt to replicate the current system configuration.
• If data is lost, then request that the IT department recover it from an off-site backup or cloud deep archive storage.

Secureframe’s automation compliance platform and in-house compliance expertise can help ensure your organization has the policies, controls, and expertise in place to protect systems proactively from business disaster and to recover if they do occur. Request a demo to learn how.

What are the 5 steps of disaster recovery planning?

The five steps of disaster recovery planning are prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. That means when planning, you should identify measures and actions to:

• avoid or prevent a disaster from occurring
• reduce the chances of a disaster occurring or the impact of it
• enhance your ability to respond when a disaster occurs
• be carried out immediately before, during, and after a disaster
• restore your business operations as quickly as possible

What are the 4 C's of disaster recovery?

The 4 C's of disaster recovery are communication, coordination, collaboration, and cooperation. Below are brief definitions of each:

• Communication  - developing and maintaining effective channels for sharing information before, during, and after disasters
• Coordination  - aligning actions to other parts of an organization or other organization to prepare for and respond to disasters
• Cooperation  - working with internal or external parties that share the same goal (ie. responding to and recovering from disasters) and strategies for achieving it
• Collaboration - partnering with internal or external parties to identify challenges and responsibilities to recover from a disaster as quickly as possible

What are the three types of disaster recovery plans?

Disaster recover plans can be tailored to different services, environments, and types of disasters. So types of disaster recovery plans include ones for IT services, data centers, and cloud environments.

How do you create a good disaster recovery plan?

Creating a good disaster recovery plan requires a few key steps such as:

• Performing a risk assessment and business impact analysis
• Setting objectives, including recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO)
• Creating an inventory of critical assets
• Defining data backup requirements and recovery strategies
• Establishing alternate communication methods
• Assigning specific roles and responsibilities

What are the key elements of a disaster recovery plan?

Key elements of a disaster recovery plan are:

• Objectives and goals
• Recovery measures and procedures
• Testing processes
• A communication plan
• Defined disaster recovery stages

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Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Download the Disaster Recovery Plan template to capture all of the information that describes the organization’s ability to withstand a disaster as well as the processes that must be followed to achieve disaster recovery.

• Prevent the loss of your organization’s resources (hardware, data, and physical assets)
• Minimize downtime related to IT
• Keep the business running in the event of a disaster

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7 Steps to Create a Cybersecurity Disaster Recovery Plan

Cybersecurity disaster recovery planning ties directly into availability objectives for information security; it also encompasses more generalized response protocols that can be applied in case of any disruptive event.

An effective cybersecurity plan must include input from all areas of a business in order to identify departmental essentials, tools, and data. This ensures all stakeholders have input into the process while creating an easier transition from one state to the next.

What is a cybersecurity disaster recovery plan?

Your business’s cybersecurity disaster recovery plan should consist of a set of procedures designed to restore access to data and systems in the event of cyber attack, human error or natural disaster. A cybersecurity disaster recovery plan should contain timelines, detailed documentation and specific goals for recovering both data and systems.

Cyberattacks have become more frequent, posing a significant threat to businesses of all sizes. A good cybersecurity disaster recovery plan can help mitigate damages while speeding the return to normal operations.

When creating a cybersecurity disaster recovery plan, it’s essential that one individual in your organization take ownership of it and will sign it off if something should go wrong – this could be your CTO or IT director, for instance. Furthermore, regular testing and practicing of your disaster recovery plan is advised.

Start cyber recovery planning for my business

If your business lacks an cybersecurity disaster recovery plan in place, now is the time to develop one. A disaster recovery plan can help mitigate losses quickly, recover data quickly, and restore normal operations as soon as possible.

As soon as your business becomes compromised by cyber threats, the longer it remains offline – costing more money in lost revenues as well as costs to rebuild and retrain employees, as well as harm to your reputation.

As part of your cybersecurity disaster recovery plan, the first step should be identifying all critical assets and outlining measures you will take to protect them. After that, setting an RTO (Recovery Time Objective) or recovery target ensures your team works quickly to resolve an incident as quickly as possible.

Goals of a Cybersecurity Disaster Recovery Plan

Cyberattacks have become more frequent and damaging, prompting organizations to devise cybersecurity disaster recovery plans to manage potential disasters caused by cyber attacks. A cybersecurity disaster recovery plan should focus on maintaining business continuity, safeguarding sensitive data, and returning normal operations quickly after such incidents occur.

These plans must include a risk evaluation to assess any threats posed by hackers and other malicious parties, and outline communication procedures so as to relay important messages to employees and clients if required.

Cyber recovery planning differs significantly from disaster recovery planning. Although they share similarities, disaster recovery tends to focus more on long-term effects while security recovery addresses immediate issues – for instance DRaaS (data center as a service) solutions use cloud solutions to replicate and host an organization’s virtual and physical servers.

1. Maintain Business Continuity

A cybersecurity disaster recovery plan’s primary objectives are to minimize costs, losses, and business disruption as quickly as possible, with its primary goals including mitigating any incident’s effects, protecting sensitive information from being compromised, communicating with stakeholders and responding quickly.

Building a cyber recovery strategy requires an interdisciplinary team of IT professionals, including cyber engineers, security analysts and incident response managers. Such teams can also help prevent attacks before they occur by conducting risk analyses and developing prevention systems.

Your team must identify which applications and data are essential to supporting the functions of your business, then develop backup plans for each. They should also establish how long an organization can tolerate downtime before setting an RPO (Recovery Point Objective), which measures how quickly data recovery should occur after disaster occurs. At SSI we can assist in creating comprehensive cybersecurity disaster recovery plans as well as professional cybersecurity support services to keep data safe from breaches or breaches.

2. Protect Sensitive Data

Making a cybersecurity disaster recovery plan requires extensive time and dedication, but also requires constant updating with new practices and techniques as hackers are always searching for ways to penetrate into business systems.

An effective cybersecurity recovery plan will assist your team in responding quickly and efficiently in the event of an incident, helping minimize its effects on your organization and protecting its valuable data and information assets.

An effective cybersecurity disaster recovery plan must start by recognizing potential threats up-front and conducting a detailed inventory analysis on hardware, software, and network assets. Establishing clear roles and responsibilities within each department to minimize the effects of an incident on your business. Having backups ensures that even catastrophic attacks such as ransomware won’t permanently compromise vital information resources.

3. Restore Normal Operations

An effective cybersecurity disaster recovery plan details all of the steps necessary for transitioning from crisis management to full restoration of operations, from last-minute data backups, mitigation of damages, limitation of losses and removal of cybersecurity threats. In addition, clear lines of communication should exist between internal and external stakeholders during emergency response processes ensuring everyone stays calm and informed throughout.

One essential component of any disaster recovery plan is having a clear idea of the maximum acceptable amount of downtime your business can endure during an attack or other IT-related disaster, known as Recovery Time Objective or RTO.

Establishing a cybersecurity disaster recovery plan is an integral step for any business that wants to shield itself against hacks, ransomware attacks and other cyberthreats. By investing in developing such plans in advance, organizations can minimize any negative effects caused by these cyberattacks while quickly recovering operations after attacks occur.

The Importance of a Cybersecurity Disaster Recovery Plan

Your cybersecurity defense must include disaster recovery planning; the goal of which should be to minimize any impact of an attack on your firm and restore normal operations as quickly as possible.

Team should work collaboratively to identify possible risk scenarios facing their business and create strategies for responding to them, including table top exercises involving all employees and managers.

Develop a Cybersecurity Disaster Recovery Plan

An organization needs a Cybersecurity Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) as an integral part of their business continuity planning strategy. A DRP offers an organized process for dealing with cyberattacks, data breaches and other cybersecurity disasters as well as longer-term incidents that may disrupt an organization.

A DRP may be developed either internally by your team or external cybersecurity specialists; either way, it’s an invaluable way to guard against ever-evolving cyber threats.

At the core of any successful cybersecurity recovery plan is identifying your greatest potential threats, so as to be able to develop strategies and technologies designed to protect against them as well as document the associated risks.

An internal individual should also be assigned the task of signing off on and executing your DRP in case of cyber attack, perhaps your Chief Technology Officer (CTO) or IT department head. Finally, your DRP should include a regular testing/re-evaluation schedule so it can be amended as necessary.

1. Choose a Plan Owner

An effective cybersecurity disaster recovery plan (DRP) can be the key to protecting your organization against data breaches and cyberattacks, showing partners, vendors, and clients alike your dedication to keeping your organization secure.

Your organization should appoint one person as the point person responsible for creating, reviewing and updating their Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP). They should add this task into their regular workload and prioritize it within the company.

Have this person in place so that everyone will know who to contact should an incident occur, tabletop exercises and testing can also help ensure your DRP remains up-to-date, as well as identify major threats and formulate plans to limit their impact. Your business must establish how long systems and technologies can operate without disruption due to attacks – this is known as your Recovery Point Objective or RPO.

2. Identify your most significant potential threat

When creating a cyber disaster recovery plan, it is vital to first assess the most severe threat. This will enable you to take steps necessary to minimize data loss and damage as well as restore business processes once an incident has passed through containment or elimination.

Threats faced by organizations include insider attacks, ransomware, worms, bot viruses, SQL injections and APT (advanced persistent threat) attacks. An insider attack occurs when a malicious actor gains access to your organization’s systems or external storage devices via one of your employees – leading to financial losses, legal ramifications and irreparable reputational harm.

Threats such as drive-by download attacks – when malware is downloaded via websites, apps or operating systems without user knowledge or consent – and ransomware attacks (where hackers encrypt your device or information and demand payment in exchange for regaining access), are other examples of cybersecurity risks that organizations face today. It is crucial that they document backup channels, services and facilities they can utilize as necessary should their organization ever become vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks.

3. Determine and document Risks

An organization must create a cybersecurity disaster recovery plan (DRP) in order to reduce the impact of an incident and establish recovery objectives. DRPs typically include business impact analysis and risk evaluation in order to create recovery objectives.

Recognizing your greatest potential threats is essential in developing a disaster recovery strategy, including understanding their financial losses and legal ramifications, their likelihood of occurring, and the cost associated with mitigating any vulnerabilities identified.

After your team has identified the most significant risks, it is critical to document them. Doing this will ensure everyone on your team understands their roles should disaster strike, and help mitigate risk through measures such as data backups or restricting access. Having documentation in place ensures your organization can quickly recover from an event when all systems are offline.

4. Develop Strategies and implement technology

Establishing and implementing cybersecurity disaster recovery strategies require IT engineers, incident responders, vulnerability analysts, risk analysts and other cybersecurity specialists. By assigning roles and responsibilities, accountability can be established thereby increasing efficiency and effectiveness within your team and decreasing sick day productivity and turnover costs.

Your team should set up protocols to evaluate how well your cybersecurity disaster recovery plan performs, making necessary improvements based on new data or learnings. Cyberattacks are continuously evolving; by having an effective plan in place you’ll ensure your business can respond promptly if ever compromised.

An effective cybersecurity disaster recovery plan should include a designated hot recovery site where backups and critical information is securely stored remotely for easy recovery in case of data breaches or security incidents. In addition, this strategy must outline ways to identify key systems, business processes and locations as potential recovery points; additionally it must outline ways of documenting dependencies with critical vendors for continuity purposes in case disruptions arise.

5. Backup critical business information

Backup plans should include important employee records such as full names, birth dates and social security numbers; key administration documents like contracts or business plans also need to be saved regularly.

Un clearly articulated data backup policy and chain of command communication process can save both time and money in the event of an outage or disaster. Establish a recovery timeline as well as strategies for key vendors.

There are vendors that provide disaster recovery sites equipped with hardware and software ready to serve as backup for your data center in case of an outage or other catastrophe. Accessing such hot sites via the internet allows your team to keep operating without interruption.

Be mindful that disaster recovery is more about people than technology; your employees require support, resources and communication during any crisis situation. So be sure to include strategies in your plan to allow them to continue working from home, on-the-go or other locations as necessary.

6. communication plan

Create a cybersecurity disaster recovery plan is essential to protecting your business against potential threats. By devising an inclusive plan, you can reduce damage and impact should an incident arise.

An effective cybersecurity disaster recovery plan should include details for communicating with customers, employees and other stakeholders during an incident or crisis as well as managing media queries that arise during that period.

Your team should become acquainted with your disaster plan before an incident strikes, in order to implement it swiftly in response. A carefully executed plan can lessen the impact of security incidents by quickly protecting crucial data and returning processes back to pre-disaster procedures.

Create a cybersecurity disaster recovery plan is not an easy feat, yet it remains essential for any business. Not only can it prevent data loss but it can also help cut costs during an incident by maintaining efficiency and productivity. Selecting an owner for the plan and regularly practicing and reviewing it will ensure your organization is ready for any cybersecurity catastrophes that might strike.

7. Testing & practice

Disaster recovery plans are essential in order to reduce downtime and protect data. Cyber threats, natural disasters and human error can all pose potential threats that disrupt business operations significantly.

Cyber disaster recovery plans (CDRP) are strategies and procedures that can be deployed during an IT crisis to minimize downtime and data loss. A successful plan requires conducting an in-depth examination of business processes as well as setting recovery objectives.

Once a plan is in place, it’s crucial that it is regularly tested and practiced in order to ensure everyone understands their role and responsibilities and that the plan works effectively. Testing also offers an excellent opportunity to make updates as the threat landscape continues to change.

To maximize the effectiveness of your disaster recovery plan, it’s essential that you establish protocols for tracking and documenting recovery metrics. This can allow you to detect gaps or deficiencies in your system and take measures before an incident arises. Incorporating virtualized disaster recovery solutions utilizing cloud solutions to replicate workloads and provide automatic failover in case of cyber disaster is also an option worth exploring.

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The 11 Best Free Disaster Recovery Plan Templates Online

• Best Practices ,

The editors at Solutions Review have compiled this list of the best free disaster recovery plan templates available online.

With cyber-attacks and natural disasters threatening your data at every turn, being prepared with a disaster recovery plan is your best defense. Having a plan can prevent debilitating data and financial loss and give you peace of mind while running your business. Creating a disaster recovery plan from scratch is a daunting task. Luckily, there are free examples of these plans online. Instead of having to search for one that works for you, the editors at Solutions Review have put together a record of the 11 best free disaster recovery plan templates online, listed below in no particular order.

The Best Free Disaster Recover Plan Templates Online

Search disaster recovery.

OUR TAKE:   Search Disaster Recovery offers a few different kinds of recovery plans, spanning business impact analysis, pandemic recovery, and business continuity. However, their IT disaster recovery plan offers a comprehensive step-by-step guide to prepare for the worst. In addition to step-by-step instructions, this template also helps practitioners to create their own table of contents for their disaster recovery plan, allowing them to easily identify key issues to address.

OUR TAKE:   IBM separates its plan into 13 sections of what is necessary for disaster recovery. If you feel confident in some areas, but less so in others, you can pick and choose which sections would be the most useful for you. IBM also offers examples of each section, enabling disaster recovery professionals to easily understand the best way to approach their recovery strategies. The 13 sections that make up this template include, major goals of a DR plan, personnel, application profile, disaster recovery procedures, and recovery plan for mobile sites, among others.

OUR TAKE:   Ontrack, a tech blog, posted their own disaster recovery plan template. It allows you to personalize your plan by filling out the template, while also offering tips in the headings of the subsections. With its template, Ontrack aims to help small businesses become comfortable with the building blocks of a disaster recovery plan and to think realistically about what it would take to resume normal business operations after a severe IT disaster.

Adams State College

OUR TAKE:  Adams State College has made its plan public online. While it applies to the college specifically, the plan is so extensive that anyone looking to create their own recovery plan could glean from it as an example. Though this template has not been updated for some time, it is still a comprehensive outline useful as a starting point for anyone beginning to develop a DR strategy

• Disaster Recovery Plan Template

OUR TAKE:   Disaster Recovery Plan Template offers, as one would expect, disaster recovery plan templates. Their basic recovery plan provides templates to make the plan specific to your needs, as well as step-by-step instructions that apply to all businesses. The template was created through extensive research on disaster recovery planning and emergency management of records and information programs.

The Council on Foundations

OUR TAKE:   The Council on Foundations provides a template that is completely comprehensive; assigning disaster roles to employees based on their job, outlining business impact analysis, and building evacuation procedures. Additionally, the Council on Foundations also offers individual templates to use in conjunction with its full Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Plan.

SANS Institute

OUR TAKE:   SANS Institute has a plan that provides an outline of what should happen in a disaster situation. If you need light structure or something to fall back on when creating your own plan, this one would be helpful. The SANS Institute’s plan also provides a discussion of the culture and employee education surrounding disaster recovery and risk avoidance.

OUR TAKE: Evolve IP designed this template to help Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) practitioners with the process of capturing and organizing the critical information needed to ensure that IT operations are in a position to survive when a disruption occurs. This template is meant as a guide only. Users should review it carefully to determine whether it appropriately fits their specific needs.

Disaster Recovery Plan Templates

OUR TAKE: In addition to offering a basic disaster recovery plan, Disaster Recovery Plan Templates also offers a recovery plan specific to IT. This provides an outline of what should occur in IT should a disaster strike. The plan is divided up into 13 sections, which include determining the scope of your plan, definitions of disaster, framework design, administrative processes, and testing processes, among others.

Southern Oregon University

OUR TAKE: Like Adams State College, Southern Oregon University has a public disaster recovery plan . While again, this plan is specific to the university, it offers guidelines on how to handle disaster recovery. The university places emphasis on testing its plan, stating that it is reviewed and updated every year by IT staff, and then those updates are approved by the organization’s chief information officer.

DisasterRecovery.org

OUR TAKE:   DisasterRecovery.org offers a free disaster recovery plan template, as well as a business continuity plan template . Additionally, the site offers emergency management, incident management, and threat plans, as well as a look at a cloud-based disaster recovery solution. This makes it a perfect place for organizations in their nascent stages to start to prepare for a disaster.

Being prepared with a disaster recovery plan is one of the best ways to maintain business continuity and protect your data, so why not get a jump start on it for free? If you find a plan from this list, consult our Disaster Recovery as a Service Buyer’s Guide, Backup and Disaster Recovery Buyer’s Guide, or our Data Protection Vendor Map for more information on disaster recovery planning.

This article was written by Tess Hanna on June 1, 2022

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Tess Hanna is an editor and writer at Solutions Review covering Backup and Disaster Recovery, Data Storage, Cloud Computing, and Network Monitoring. Recognized by Onalytica in the 2021 "Who's Who in Data Management," and "Who's Who in Automation" reports. You can contact her at [email protected]

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The recent pandemic has shown that disruptions in daily business can happen quickly and without warning. Whether as a result of a  pandemic , natural disaster or network disruptions due to cybersecurity incidents, you need to ensure that your business can keep running through operational difficulties.  One way to help your business keep going is by developing a disaster recovery plan.

What is a disaster recovery plan?

A disaster recovery plan, also known as a DRP, is a formal business document that outlines  in detail the actions and assets needed in the event of a disaster. It includes the required processes, assets, employees and services.

DRPs have become a staple in modern business. They can play a vital role in keeping a business going long term when they are designed and used correctly. Every business is unique, but there is a basic template. Here are the critical elements of a disaster recovery plan template and why they’re essential.

Disaster Recovery Plan Template

1. asset management.

At the beginning of drafting your DRP, you need to take stock and document all of your critical hardware and software for the business. This includes all layers of your information technology (IT) systems, including hardware, software, network components and relevant business databases. Even outside of drafting a DRP, auditing and documenting all business assets is a best business practice that can lead to improved scalability and added discernibility into total operating expenses.

2. Identifying RTO and RPO

When preparing for and deploying your disaster recovery initiative, it’s vital to establish your business’s Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). 

The RTO is a pre-established deadline for a business to recover their systems after an outage. You could measure this in hours, days or even weeks.

The RPO relates to a business’ loss tolerance. This is measured by the amount of data that can be lost and is deemed acceptable before causing impactful damage to the group.

Both RTO and RPO are important metrics to understand as various sections of your disaster recovery plan use them for reference. RTOs and RPOs are also subject to change regularly, so it’s important that a business audits these targets often and updates their DRPs as needed.

3. Collect and Audit SLA Agreements

Over time, many businesses will begin working with third-party service providers. When developing your disaster recovery plan, identifying and recording all service level agreements (SLA) between service providers and suppliers is essential. In the event of a network outage, it’s crucial to have a thorough idea of who is responsible for what when recovering systems and restoring backups. This is true whether it is an on-premise or cloud-based outage. Making an SLA is also an important step when ensuring your service providers can meet your business’s RTO and RPO standards.

4. Choose and Establish a Disaster Recovery Site

Next, businesses will want to find a disaster recovery site to manage company backups and support infrastructure. Disaster recovery sites are typically built in remote locations and are used to help restore IT infrastructure and other mission-critical operations during a long-term outage . There are various types of disaster recovery sites to choose from, so find one that supports your own business priorities.

5. Establish Personnel Roles

When establishing a disaster recovery plan within your organization, you should identify each person’s role within the group or outside for disaster recovery processes. To do this, designate and qualify a person or a team to declare certain cases in an emergency as needed. This will be a critical first step when starting the DRP process and streamlining communication levels once recovery efforts are underway. Clearly define role assignments for each person, and train them on their involvement with the DRP process.

6. Build a Communication Plan

Creating a thorough communication plan prior to disaster recovery efforts is vital to the return of normal work. This starts by carefully naming and recording all departments and employees involved. Next, define procedures on how to contact each of the employees and their departments. You should include vendors, partners and customers.

7. Outline Disaster Recovery Protocols

Lastly, outline all of your disaster recovery protocols. These will reference other sections of the DRP. They allow you to list step-by-step instructions for resuming work according to the RTO and RPO. 

8. Perform Regular Testing

Don’t forget to audit and test your DRP to make sure it is effective. For many growing businesses, infrastructure needs and service agreements change. Therefore, it’s vital to ensure your DRP remains factual and efficient over time. A regular routine of audits and DRP tests will ensure that your disaster recovery efforts keep working as the business grows and changes.  

Developing a disaster recovery plan now is a significant step forward to ensuring your business’s long-term viability. Take a close look at your own business needs before following any specific disaster recovery plan template. In many cases, disaster recovery service experts can help consult during the DRP building process. By investing the time now to build a thorough and regularly-updated disaster recovery plan, you’ll ensure your business can weather whatever storm comes your way. 

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Disaster Recovery Plan Templates

By Andy Marker | November 26, 2018

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In this article, you’ll find the most useful disaster plan templates, available for download in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF formats. Customize the free templates to fit your business needs so you can maintain productivity and operations in the event of a disaster.

Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Use this template to document and track all critical operations, personnel contact information, and key procedures to perform in the event of a disaster or business disruption. Use the designated space to record critical information, like the backup process, recovery sites, and restoration steps. This template is available for download in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

Download Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Word | PowerPoint | PDF  | Smartsheet

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Disaster Risk Reduction Management Plan Template

Use this template to record the most essential information your organization needs in order to effectively gauge risks. Within the disaster risk reduction management plan, you’ll find space to detail risk severity and likelihood and outline it on a visual chart. Use this template to stay on top of risks and detail how to handle any disaster or disruption, no matter the severity.

Download Disaster Risk Reduction Management Plan Template

Excel  | PDF  | Smartsheet

IT Disaster Plan Template

This template outlines the specific steps for continuing business operations and recovery in the IT field. Space is included to document IT objectives, key IT personnel and all necessary contact information, recovery plan overview, and emergency response teams. Available in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats, this template serves as a blueprint for recovering from all IT disruptions. .

Download IT Disaster Plan Template

Word | PowerPoint | PDF

Data Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Use this template to document the process for recovering key data after a disaster or disruption in business operations. With space to list a statement of intent, emergency response processes, financial and legal information, and recovery plan practice and implementation, this template will aid in the restoration of all critical business data.

Download Data Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Disaster Recovery Communication Plan Template

This disaster recovery communication plan template will help you identify the core communications across team members in the event of a disaster. This template provides space to assign responsibilities, identify stakeholders, and set up a proper response plan. This template is available in both Microsoft Word and PDF formats.

Download Disaster Recovery Communication Plan Template

Payroll Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Plan, track, and manage a disaster that affects the payroll process of your organization and hinders normal HR operations. You can use this template to detail key contact information, disaster recovery teams, and emergency alert and activation measures dealing with a disaster that affects typical payroll operations. This customizable template is available in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

Download Payroll Disaster Recovery Plan Template

School Disaster Management Plan Template

In the event of a disaster or emergency situation at a school, use this template to plan the exact details involved in the response, mitigation, and recovery plan. Manage all risks that could potentially plague schools, such as site security or power outages. With space to document a full risk assessment, a preparedness plan, and response actions, your school will be fully prepared.

Download School Disaster Management Plan Template

Disaster Management Plan Template

Use this comprehensive template to detail the response and management plan of your organization after a disaster strikes. With space to include an outline of your overall disaster recovery plan, key contact information, disaster recovery procedures, and alternate recovery sites, this template enables you to manage any catastrophe that may affect your organization.

Download Disaster Management Plan Template

Simple Disaster Recovery Plan for Small Businesses

This template offers a simple yet comprehensive recovery plan for small businesses when a disaster or emergency situation interrupts typical activity. You’ll find space to outline everything from recovery plans to backup procedures, and even disaster site rebuilding and relocation plans. This template is available for download in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

Download Simple Disaster Recovery Plan for Small Businesses

SaaS Disaster Recovery Plan Template

This template is specifically designed for SaaS organizations to plan, manage, and assess the damage after a disaster occurs. Outline key objectives, provide a detailed overview, and assign responsibilities across emergency and disaster response teams with this comprehensive template available in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

Download SaaS Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Disaster Drill Evaluation Template

Use this template during and after a disaster drill to evaluate the effectiveness of your organization’s plan. Record the type of disaster the drill is for, drill initiation and complete times, emergency response team accuracy, and lessons learned. Download and customize for your business needs, available in both Microsoft Word and PDF formats.

Download Disaster Drill Evaluation Template

Excel | Word | PDF

Disaster Call Tree Template

Streamline the process of phone communication when an emergency occurs. Use this template to detail the person responsible for starting the call tree, as well as all of the people who then contact others to effectively and quickly alert all team members of the disaster.

Download Disaster Call Tree Template

Excel | Word | PowerPoint | PDF

Manufacturing Disaster Recovery Plan Template

In the event of a disaster that affects the normal manufacturing operations, use this template to outline the critical details needed to restore manufacturing. With space to document critical personnel responsibilities, contingency operations, backup locations, and more, manufacturing teams can continue or relocate operations to maintain normal functions as quickly as possible.

Download Manufacturing Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Disaster Recovery Runbook

Use this template to document the steps to recovery from a disaster. You can apply this template across a multitude of business functions or teams. Easily document key details like communication strategies, disaster declaration and response procedures, infrastructure overviews, and restoration details in one place. This template is available for download in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

Download Disaster Recovery Runbook

Application Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Use this template to document specific steps for recovering from a disaster or business disruption. There is space to include policy statements, contact information, and disaster and emergency response teams and procedures. This template is available to customize and download in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

Download Application Disaster Recovery Plan Template

Law Firm Disaster Recovery Plan Template

This template offers specific recovery procedures and processes associated specifically with law firms. Document disaster response steps, personnel losses, new employee training, and office space information to effectively tackle the aftermath of a disaster that plagues a law company. This template is available for download in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

Download Law Firm Disaster Recovery Plan Template

What Is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a step-by-step procedure that outlines how a business or organization will recover from disrupted systems, operations, processes, or networks. The aim of a DRP is to identify critical systems or procedures, prioritize recovery time objectives (RTOs), document key personnel contact information, and outline any necessary policies to follow in the event of a disaster.

What Is the Purpose of a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A DRP is an essential document for any business or organization, as it ensures that all normal business processes, infrastructure, and applications continue to operate when a major disaster strikes. Usually, a disaster recovery plan is included as part of the overall business impact analysis .

Additionally, the plan provides details for responding to unplanned incidents, which can include cyber attacks, environmental or natural disasters (flood, earthquake, landslide, volcano, tornado, etc.), power disruptions, fires, employee errors, hardware or software failures, terrorism or sabotage, bomb or shooter threats, and more.

A DRP can also minimize the negative impacts of disasters by helping to ensure that all business locations are kept safe. In addition to all of these positive effects of having a DRP, it also helps with the following:

• Ensure employees and team members can react rapidly and restore activity effectively, in light of an emergency or disaster.
• Capture, summarize, and organize critical information needed to restore business operations.
• Develop, test, and document a detailed, easy-to-understand plan.
• Secure contingency plans, and ensure they are cost effective.
• Build resilience within the business.
• Identify responsibilities of each team member, and outline disaster practices to ensure effectiveness.
• Prepare and respond to emergencies most likely to plague certain business, teams, or roles.
• Ensure the overall prosperity and survival of the business.

Most businesses cannot afford to be non-profitable and lose critical operations for an extended period of time. DRPs help to ensure that all operations can be restored in a quick, responsive manner.

Steps For Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan

When you are writing your disaster recovery plan, start by conducting a thorough business impact analysis to identify your organization’s most essential parts or critical services and how a disaster might affect them. Assess the risk and impact associated with losing business functions in a disaster.

Look at historical or company background information to determine if any disasters have affected the organization in the past, and how they were consequently handled. Perform a gap analysis to compare what is currently being done to prevent or handle a disaster against what should be done, and see if there are missing components. Next, identify any existing preventive controls to mitigate disasters.

From there, you can start creating a disaster recovery plan by following these steps:

• Develop recovery strategies.
• Obtain management commitment and authorization to proceed with DRP creation.
• Classify and prioritize business operations.
• Set the scope of the DRP, either in covering a whole business, specific teams, or individual people.
• Develop the cost estimate and scheduling of the plan to share with key stakeholders.
• Determine supplies, equipment, and other infrastructure that must be maintained during a disaster.
• Establish an emergency communication system, usually through a call tree, and include support services and assistance information.
• Document emergency response actions and internal recovery strategies, and designate specific teams to carry them out, as well as dependent processes that must be handled in a particular order.
• Determine data and records backup and data restoration times to ensure timely IT recovery.
• Designate specific phases of your DRP, such as a response phase, resumption phase, and restoration phase.
• Identify “hot” and “cold” sites, when necessary.
• Plan an evacuation route.
• Include detailed instructions and contact information in the case of a medical emergency.
• Determine a comprehensive plan to rebuild a disaster site.
• Determine a hazard assessment to minimize exposure to risks and dangers.
• Create an emergency checklist to have on-hand when a disaster strikes.
• Conduct tests and trainings of the DRP.
• Perform an annual review of your DRP and document any necessary changes in the plan.

Who Are the Resources Involved in a Disaster Recovery Plan?

A DRP is comprised of many different human resources who are leveraged when a disaster or emergency strikes. These participants are usually grouped into teams to cover a variety of important responsibilities included in a DRP.

The plan development team helps craft the plan and assigns responsibilities to the other resources. The IT and application teams deal with disaster strategies that disrupt that portion of the business, and the emergency response team focuses on the overall emergency response process of the entire organization.

Within the emergency response team is a primary crisis manager and a company spokesperson who both focus on communicating and acting on emergency response procedures. An emergency contact helps in altering the rest of the business of the disaster, specifically to vendors or suppliers who may work remotely.

Tips For Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan

Because a DRP is an important document for any business or organization to have, creating the most accurate, clear, and actionable plan can be daunting. The following tips can help:

• Establish clearly defined roles for each team member.
• Get support and buy-in from senior management.
• Keep the wording and process description simple.
• Review results with business units.
• Be flexible and accept suggestions regarding all parts of the DRP.
• Plan for emergencies most likely to happen where you live, or according to your business.
• Detail what to do in the event of lost communication, evacuation, and safety threats.
• Make sure you have a strong communication plan across your organization.
• Always plan and prepare for the worst case scenario.
• Conduct extensive risk assessments to ensure you are covering all your bases.
• Consider the specific needs or accommodations of all employees.
• Organize your team and perform practice plans before a disaster actually strikes.

Once you have completed the plan, ask the following questions to ensure that your DRP is coherent, comprehensive, and easy to implement:

• Are all employees able to execute the plan, and is everyone aware of their role?
• Are backup procedures detailed, and are they accessible within a desired timeline?
• Are there specific contingency operations in place if one of the primary procedures fails?
• Is the recovery time objective and recovery point objective (RPO) practical for your business and all of your team members?
• Can systems be restored before an excessive amount of revenue or data is lost?

Examples of Effective Disaster Recovery Plans and Additional Resources

For more direction in creating the most appropriate and actionable DRP for your business, refer to these recovery plan examples to gain familiarity and understanding of how to write and what to include in a DRP.

• MIT Disaster Recovery Plan : MIT outlines all critical components of a DRP, including purpose of plan, disaster response, disaster detection, and business continuity teams.
• IBM Disaster Recovery Plan : IBM clearly documents key details of their business to minimize the effect of a disaster, including recovery procedures, recovery sites, major goals, and plan testing.

To gain an even better idea of how to create the best disaster recovery plan, and detail why every business should have one, refer to these helpful resources and reports:

• NIST Special Publication 800-34
• EMC IT Downtime Report
• Computer Security Resource Center
• Guide to Test, Training, and Exercise Programs for IT Plans & Capabilities
• Building an Information Technology Security Awareness & Training Program
• FEMA: “Emergency Management Guide for Business and Industry”

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When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

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