11. Disaster Recovery.
Objective: To survive, work and recover from major and minor disasters affecting departments and interactions with other parts of the Company.

The Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is part of the broader Business Continuity Plan (BCP) (see 8. Business continuity).


Both activities help prepare an organization for disaster and both aim to keep operations running whenever possible and restore functions as quickly as possible in the event of an outage.


The difference is that the assets of Business Continuity are strategically focused at a high level and focus on business processes and operations, while those of the Disaster Recovery they are more tactics and they describe technical activities how recovery sites, backup etc.


The DRP it has a practical connotation, therefore specific to the Company's processes and resources (physical / cloud data center, services, production plants, people, buildings, systems and data, equipment and other assets).


The responsibility of the DRP is in charge of Disaster Recovery Team, a management body that coordinates the activities, company functions, carries out internal and external communications, makes operational decisions (e.g. declares a state of emergency and authorizes the activities of the DRP).


In turn the DRP is divided into specific plans for the different phases:

- Response plan

- Recovery plan

- Restore plan


Response plan

Activate the DRP it involves important direct and indirect costs and once the time necessary to return from emergency operation to normal has been undertaken, it is significant.


It is therefore necessary that the activation phase of the DRP is managed with a specific action plan that defines:

- The composition of the Disaster Recovery coordination team (Disaster Recovery Team) and the methods of calling;

- the criteria for the activation of the DRP and who has the authority to declare a state of disaster;

- the notification processes e internal and external communication;

- the composition of the Response Team and the methods of calling;

- the procedures and checklists which must be performed by the Response Team as soon as possible;


For the Response Team the Checklist, if clear and well structured, are of utmost importance because in situations of tension and chaos they are able to give a sense of order and help operators to focus on what is necessary and urgent to do.


Recovery plan

Defines the recovery activities of business operations according to the state of degradation, priority and dependencies (see 8. Business continuity).


It is of fundamental importance that the documentation to be followed is streamlined and contains all the essential information.


The recovery priority depend on the criticality of the function for the company and on the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) that is to say:


the maximum time available for the operational recovery of the function so that serious or irreparable damage to the Company does not occur


At this stage it is vital to have up-to-date and functioning backup copies of the systems to be restored (see 10. BACKUP, does it seem easy?).


The Recovery Team operationally follows the operations until the reactivation of all the functions envisaged by the plan and any alternative sites.


Restore plan

Operations following recovery are often at a lower level than normal and the purpose of the Restore Plan is the return to normal as soon as possible.


At the end of the emergency Disaster Recovery Team will decide when to restore operations at the main site and to disable any alternate sites enabled for the DRP.


AND? the Salvage Team , in close coordination with the Recovery Team, which deals with the restoration of the operating conditions prior to the disaster with a orderly transition , then reactivation of physical offices, services, etc.


The definition of teams distinct by purpose is important to focus activities and responsibilities in each specific phase of the DRP, but in practice, especially in small companies, it is normal for the same people to be part of more than one team.


There sharing of objectives and contents of the DRP with all the staff it is essential for its effectiveness.