Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity

Risk & dependency mapping

• Identify single points of failure (server, database, storage, certificates, DNS, email)
• List critical integrations (payment providers, SMS/email, APIs, identity providers)
• Highlight high-impact scenarios: hosting outage, ransomware, accidental deletion, bad deploy
• Decide what “must be back today” vs “can wait until tomorrow”

Recovery targets (RTO & RPO)

• RTO: how quickly you need the system back (e.g. 2 hours, same day, 48 hours)
• RPO: how much data you can afford to lose (e.g. 15 minutes, 1 hour, 24 hours)
• Translate targets into concrete actions (backup frequency, log backups, replication, hosting choices)
• Make trade-offs explicit: cost vs complexity vs recovery speed

Typical components

• Full backups on a sensible schedule (often nightly)
• Differential backups to reduce restore time where appropriate
• Transaction log backups for tighter RPO (e.g. every 5–15 minutes)
• Encryption for backup files and protected credentials/keys
• Retention policy aligned to your operational and compliance needs
• Verification (checksums / integrity checks) so failures are noticed early

Common pitfalls

• Backups stored on the same server (won’t survive disk loss or ransomware)
• “We do backups” but nobody can actually restore under time pressure
• Missing log backups / wrong recovery model
• Backups failing quietly due to space/permissions
• No plan for app secrets, certificates, or environment configuration

Cloud/off-site options

• Secondary storage account or bucket with restricted access
• Immutable / write-once style storage where available (ransomware resilience)
• Separate credentials from the main server (reduce blast radius)
• Retention tiers: short-term fast restore + longer-term archive

Access control & safety

• Least privilege for backup jobs (only what they need)
• Separate admin accounts and MFA for backup storage
• Alerting on backup failures and unusual delete activity
• Documented key/credential recovery process

Examples of runbooks

• Restore SQL Server database to a new server
• Recover from accidental deletion / bad data import
• Rebuild a web server/app service from known-good configuration
• Roll back a deployment safely
• Recreate scheduled jobs, background workers, and integrations

Verification checklist

• App boots and health checks pass
• Users can log in and key workflows work
• Recent data is present (RPO met)
• Background tasks and emails/SMS are functioning
• Monitoring and alerts are back in place

Offline-first (where appropriate)

• Clear rules on what can be captured offline (forms, photos, signatures)
• Queue-and-sync patterns that avoid duplicate submissions
• Conflict handling (what happens if two people edit the same record)
• Safe retry/backoff so outages don’t hammer your API

Communication during incidents

• In-app status banners (known outage, degraded mode, maintenance windows)
• Fallback workflows for critical operations
• Clear support escalation paths for staff in the field

Operational confidence

• Confidence your core systems can be recovered if hosting or hardware fails
• Reduced risk of permanent data loss
• Clear responsibilities and emergency contacts
• A realistic picture of downtime and cost

Better stakeholder conversations

• Better answers for customers and suppliers when asked “what’s your DR posture?”
• Improved conversations with insurers and auditors
• Less dependence on a single “key person”

How often should we test restores?

At least periodically — and always after major infrastructure changes. Many teams only discover issues when it’s too late. A lightweight restore test can be quick, and it dramatically increases confidence.

Is “high availability” the same as disaster recovery?

Not quite. High availability reduces downtime for certain failures, but it doesn’t replace backups or protect against accidental deletion, ransomware, or bad data. Most SMEs benefit from solid backups + a clear runbook first.