What is Disaster Recovery Plan?

A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a strategy particularly designed to minimize downtime by restoring data and IT infrastructure following a disaster. It includes steps minimizing the effects of a disaster in a way that the organization can continuously operate or quickly resume its essential and critical functions. Different types of a Disaster Recovery Plan are Network Disaster Recovery Plan, Virtualized DRP, Cloud DRP, and Data Center DRP.

Key components of a Disaster Recovery Plan include:

• Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis (BIA): A DRP identifies the potential threats and risks to IT systems and Infrastructure, assess the potential impact on IT services, data, and applications, and prioritize the risks according to the severity of disruptions.
• Recovery Strategies: It defines Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives for the critical IT applications and systems, and develops strategies for the achievement of recovery objectives.
• Backup and Recovery Procedures: A DRP implements backup systems and procedures to ensure that the data, applications, and configurations are regularly backed-up. It includes defining backup schedules, retention policies, and storage mechanisms.
• System Redundancy and Failover Mechanisms: It includes implementation of redundant systems and components for minimizing single failure points, and configuration of failover mechanisms for the critical IT systems and applications. It helps in quickly switching over to the backup components or alternate data centers at the time of failure.
• Data Protection and Security: It includes implementation of different measures to protect data integrity, confidentiality, and availability; encryption of sensitive data; implementation of access controls; and establishment of security protocols to avoid data breach.

Business Continuity Plan and Disaster Recovery Plan are two essential components of Risk Management. They help in ensuring resilience at times of unexpected disruptions. A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a risk management strategy that outlines the procedures and protocols of an organization, ensuring continuous operation within the company, during and after disruptive incidents. However, a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) is a structured approach outlining the procedures and protocols of an organization, ensuring recovery and restoration of critical IT systems and infrastructure, after a disruptive incident.