# SMB Guide to Crafting an Effective IT Disaster Recovery Plan | Capterra > Learn the six essential components of an effective IT disaster recovery plan guaranteed to ensure business continuity following a disaster event. Source: https://www.capterra.com/resources/what-is-an-it-disaster-recovery-plan --- Digital SecurityIT & Software Development # What Is an IT Disaster Recovery Plan, and Why Do You Need One? Written by: David J. Brin David J. BrinAuthor David is the Managing Partner for the Code Ninjas franchise responsible for the Baton Rouge, LA market, where he facilitates the education of youth in progra... [See bio & all articles](https://www.capterra.com/resources/author/david-brin/) and edited by: Parul Sharma Parul SharmaEditor Content Editor Experience I have been an editor at Capterra for over two years, contributing to curating and enhancing content for various niches, including ... [See bio & all articles](https://www.capterra.com/resources/author/parul-sharma/) Published August 1, 2024 9 min read Table of Contents - [Benefits of having an IT disaster recovery plan](#benefits-of-having-an-it-disaster-recovery-plan) - [6 essential elements of an IT disaster recovery plan](#6-essential-elements-of-an-it-disaster-recovery-plan) - [Disaster recovery plan examples](#disaster-recovery-plan-examples) - [IT resources to help with your disaster recovery plannig](#it-services-and-tools-to-help-with-your-disaster-recovery-plan-efforts) ## An effective IT disaster recovery plan enables businesses to withstand disasters. Surviving operational disruptions is one of the most challenging tasks when a business is witnessing a disaster. Businesses of all sizes rely upon business continuity plans (BCPs) as a necessary tool in the disaster recovery process to avoid infrastructural damage and other disruptions. A well-structured BCP has multiple components that can be utilized by different departments: - Business resumption plan - Occupant emergency plan - Continuity of operations plan - Incident management plan - Disaster recovery plan Of these different plans, disaster recovery plans are crucial for the stability of the business’s IT infrastructure following a disaster event. This has increasingly become the case as the costs and collateral damage from threat actors leveraging ransomware attacks and other exceedingly complex and diverse cyberattack methods against small businesses skyrocket. The average data breach cost in 2023 reached $4.45 million, up 15% from 2020. [\[1\]](#sources) Small businesses are especially at risk for financial losses and reputational damage from cyberattacks as they lack the resources to maintain an in-house security team. Having an IT disaster recovery plan can help mitigate the damage in multiple ways. Investing in sufficient IT security and recovery measures centered around a robust disaster recovery plan helps mitigate and minimize that damage, allowing the company to return to full operational status with minimal disruption. ## Benefits of having an IT disaster recovery plan Investing in IT disaster recovery plans ensures the business continuity of critical technology infrastructure and systems in the event of a cyberattack, natural disaster, failure of software or hardware systems, or other forms of business disruption that prevent a business from servicing its clients. Composed of documents breaking down disaster-specific responses and actions to be taken by each department and employee, IT disaster recovery plans: - Minimize disaster response times  - Ensure efficient resource deployment - Prioritize consumer rights and protect their privacy - Ensure compliance with legislative and regulatory requirements Disaster recovery plans that accomplish these goals effectively help to protect the brand’s overall reputation by minimizing the impact of the disaster event on the customer experience. ## 6 essential elements of an IT disaster recovery plan Disaster recovery plans play a crucial role alongside the other elements of a BCP. While your organization might operate in an industry with specific regulatory requirements, every disaster recovery plan should include six key components. ### Recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives Disaster events can be chaotic, preventing clear communication between your brand and your customer base. For a disaster recovery plan to protect your business’s growth in this situation, it should: - **Provide clear guidance about prioritizing software recovery** to allow you to efficiently perform customer engagement activities and income-generating tasks such as sales or order fulfillment.  - **Establish minimum requirements for your company’s existing data backup practices** as part of the recovery goals. This is crucial as disaster events can impact the integrity and viability of the data your organization may be reliant upon for daily operational tasks.  - **Draft a timeline to accomplish your goals for IT infrastructure recovery.** You should take into account two important questions: _How much revenue loss can the company absorb as a result of downtime? How much data can you afford to be lost, corrupted, or stolen?_ ### Detailed IT inventory IT system recovery prioritization planning requires knowing what systems and hardware are in play. For your team to set practical recovery goals, your IT disaster recovery plan must include a comprehensive, ranked list of cloud-based assets, software, and hardware in your organization. The rankings should reflect how critical each asset is to business continuity. The organized list should also delineate between assets in use through a service provider, leased assets, and assets owned by the business, so you don’t have to spend time figuring out details about the asset in the event of a disaster.  ### Personnel recovery responsibilities Communication disruptions and a breakdown in the daily workflow are common in case of a disaster. An effective IT disaster recovery plan should: - **Give a detailed breakdown of employee roles and responsibilities.** These details should be followed to achieve the plan’s recovery goals.  - **Provide information about backup personnel assigned to vital recovery roles**. As disaster events might impact your staff differently, the backup personnel will help fill gaps if the assigned key personnel are unavailable or unable to perform the assigned duties. ### Enumerated IT backup methods Your IT disaster recovery plan should include a comprehensive breakdown of your data management procedures. This should include: - How your data is split between the systems across your network - The backup schedule for your existing data storage - Recovery methods from backup options  An effective backup strategy should include an offsite location as a fallback recovery site where data can be backed up to or recovered from during a crisis. Off-side storage is becoming an increasingly attractive option to business leaders, with 24% of IT workers surveyed in Capterra’s IT Management survey saying that off-site storage for disaster recovery is one of the top factors influencing their decision to use cloud-based data backup software.[\*](#methodology) With the right service or vendor in place for recovery, the offsite backup space can house redundant critical systems to minimize downtime. ### Ways to configure your backup site Backup sites can be configured in several different ways. We’ve gathered here standard recovery practices, arranged according to how long it would take to achieve recovery time objectives. - **Cold recovery sites** are bare-boned spaces providing power and network access. The company must provide its hardware and manually install recovered data, which could slow the recovery process. Cold standby sites replicate your systems to a remote location with offline resources. Disaster events trigger the cold standby site to be brought online. - **Warm recovery sites** are facilities that come with storage hardware and are ready for immediate use. However, warm recovery sites are not often the official backup sites for the company’s data. This means that it will take time to upload and restore systems to storage devices to regain full functionality.  - **Hot standby recovery sites** are fully functional backup sites. They are already being used by the organization as a mirror site for data recovery and allow for seamless continuity of service.  - **Active sites** are configured around high availability and fault-tolerant architectures, distributing multiple instances of your services and applications across different locations and data centers. Each backup location can process client requests, and the sites share the workload.  Moreover, you can explore additional cloud-based and third-party recovery solutions that virtually mirror premise-based recovery solutions in Gartner’s “Design and Document Disaster Recovery Strategy.” [\[2\]](#sources) ### Disaster recovery procedures This portion of the disaster recovery plan should include responses to specific disasters, damage mitigation methods to address specific types of incidents, and event-based rules for when off-schedule backups or other recovery activities should be performed. ### Disaster-specific guidelines for restoration The remainder of a well-structured IT disaster recovery plan consists of detailed, disaster-specific action plans that combine each of the above steps into unique and targeted responses. Each tailored plan prioritizes systems and hardware differently, depending on the fallout from the disaster event. When compiling the plans for each type of disaster event, it’s important to incorporate relevant public relations and media communications guidelines to help manage the impact on your organization’s reputation. This is especially important when client data is compromised and regulatory requirements dictate a necessary level of information dissemination. ## Disaster recovery plan examples While we’ve laid out a guide for SMBs to construct robust disaster recovery plans, every company’s plan is unique, based on: - Where the organization operates geographically - How dependent the business is on its IT infrastructure - Whether it operates in an industry heavily targeted by threat actors Disaster recovery plans address three major categories of disaster events, including: ### Natural disasters Natural disasters such as earthquakes, severe storms, weather events, and flooding can cause businesses to experience extreme levels of disruption. These events can destroy or damage office spaces and on-site hardware. They can also lead to power disruptions and network outages, resulting in data loss and even disrupting data backup measures. Example The U.S. Department of the Interior provides extensive materials on disaster response and recovery for natural disasters, including a number of case studies on how the federal government deployed resources for natural disaster events throughout the 2000s, including the Texas Wildfire of 2011 and New Mexico Floods of 2014. [\[3\]](#sources) ### Technological disasters Technological disaster events, often resulting in hardware and software failures, local or remote power failures, or network outages, can either accompany natural disaster events or occur as a stand-alone disaster event. These events are often associated with a degree of business disruption and data loss or corruption and often are accompanied by an inability to communicate or interact with customers. If the event impacts on-site hardware, the costs to the business are multiplied by not only the loss in business revenue but also the costs of repairing or replacing hardware in order to fully resume operations. Example Cloud computing and virtualization service provider VMware provides a perfect example of how to recover from a technology failure in a case study about a plane crash in 2010 crashing into power lines near its Palo Alto data center and causing a total power outage in the area. [\[4\]](#sources) ### Malicious actors and cyberattacks Cyberattacks are designed to disrupt operations and prevent your company from servicing customers. They can also compromise, destroy, or extract client data from your network. According to Capterra’s 2023 Data Security Survey, ransomware attacks have been especially damaging to SMBs, but some of that damage can be mitigated or anticipated with a properly structured disaster recovery plan in place.[\*\*](#methodology) Of the 37% of companies surveyed who have been subject to a ransomware attack in the past 12 months, 19% say data was lost but then recovered from the attack using data backup (without paying the ransom), only 3% did not pay a ransom or have a data backup strategy and accepted the permanent loss of data. Among those who accepted the risks of paying the ransom, 67% recovered their data—but one in three (33%) lost both their money and their data.[\*\*](#methodology) Modern disaster recovery plans are incomplete without a comprehensive outline to prevent, mitigate, or recover from cyberattacks. To remain compliant with increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, many businesses are folding cyber insurance into their disaster recovery planning to mitigate the fallout from an attack and manage liability. Example Cyberattacks can come at an organization across a number of different vectors, due to how extensively some organizations leverage technology in their daily operations. Cybersecurity agency Digiguard provides online readers with a breakdown of three case studies of how they helped three clients mitigate the fallout from cyberattacks involving a ransomware attack, a social engineering and phishing attack, and a threat actor infiltrating a client’s network. [\[5\]](#sources) ## IT services and tools to help with your disaster recovery plan efforts Capterra can provide your team with the auditing tools and resources necessary to assess how much of an actual impact the disaster had on your organization in the months following. [\[6\]](#sources) With a clear vision of the necessary systems, monitoring, and technology management your team needs to perform both leading up to a disaster event as well as in the wake of an event, Capterra’s [IT management software directory](https://www.capterra.com/it-management-software/) and [IT service software directory](https://www.capterra.com/it-service-software/) can be invaluable resources to identify solutions. Capterra can also guide you on how to identify service providers that offer disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), including a detailed breakdown of what services you should ensure they offer and what type of recovery service meets your organization’s needs. [\[7\]](#sources) Once you understand your needs and want to explore service providers, you can peruse your options in Capterra’s IT Services Agencies directory. ## Guarantee business continuity with strong disaster recovery planning practices The ability to maintain business continuity is crucial for an organization to survive the financial repercussions resulting from a crisis event or cyberattack. Gartner’s disaster recovery templates, checklists, and metrics toolkit is a comprehensive online resource that leaders of SMBs and startups can use to build, enhance, or improve a disaster recovery program if you’re looking to handle this process in-house. [\[8\]](#sources) Whether you’re exploring in-house options or IT service agencies and IT management solutions through Capterra’s directories and software listings, you can also gain additional insight about your IT management and cybersecurity needs from Capterra’s extensive library of expert-sourced articles: - [Types of IT Services and Functions](https://www.capterra.com/resources/types-of-it-services/) - [4 Key IT Management Software Features and Top Products That Offer Them](https://www.capterra.com/resources/it-management-software-features/) - [Why Should You Automate Your IT Infrastructure?](https://www.capterra.com/resources/infrastructure-automation/) ## Capterra's 2026 Software Buying Trends Report ### Download our 2026 Software Buying Trends Report to see how successful software adopters avoid disappointment and how your business can, too. * * * **Survey methodology** \*Capterra’s IT Management Survey was conducted in June 2023 among 500 respondents to learn more about IT management practices at U.S. businesses. All respondents were screened for IT positions at companies with 1000 or fewer employees. \*\*Capterra’s 2023 Data Security Survey was conducted in August 2023 among 872 respondents to learn more about data security practices at U.S. businesses. All respondents were screened for full-time employment at U.S. businesses. 362 respondents identified as IT management professionals and 271 identified as IT security managers. Sources 1. [Cost of a data breach 2023](https://www.ibm.com/reports/data-breach), IBM 2. [Design and Document a Disaster Recovery Strategy](https://www.gartner.com/document/5402563?ref=solrAll&refval=411192913&), Gartner 3. [Recovery in Action](https://www.doi.gov/recovery/recovery-in-action/), US Department of the Interior 4. [VMware IT Disaster Recovery - Case Study](https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/casestudy/vmware-it-journey/disaster-recovery-case-study.pdf), VMware 5. [Case Studies: Cyber Security Incident Response](https://www.digiguardsecurity.com/resources/case-studies.html), Digiguard Cybersecurity 6. [Tool: IT Disaster Recovery Plan Assessment](https://www.gartner.com/document/4010437?ref=solrAll&refval=411192913&), Gartner 7. [Market Guide for Disaster Recovery as a Service](https://www.gartner.com/document/5353463?ref=solrAll&refval=411192913&), Gartner 8. [Toolkit: Disaster Recovery Templates, Checklists and Metrics](https://www.gartner.com/document/5252263?ref=solrAll&refval=411192913&), Gartner * * * Looking for IT Management software?Check out Capterra's list of the [best IT Management software](https://www.capterra.com/it-management-software/) solutions. ### Was this article helpful? * * * ## About the Authors [### David J. Brin](https://www.capterra.com/resources/author/david-brin/) David is the Managing Partner for the Code Ninjas franchise responsible for the Baton Rouge, LA market, where he facilitates the education of youth in programming, game design, and STEM education fundamentals. A lifelong learner, David combines a passion for strong business practices and solid marketing strategies honed throughout his 20-year career in the food and beverage industry with his desire to share those best practices with other business owners to create content for Capterra. When... [### Parul Sharma](https://www.capterra.com/resources/author/parul-sharma/) Parul is an editor at Capterra with over half a decade of experience curating news, IT, software, finance, lifestyle, and health content. She excels at simplifying complex terms into engaging content for SMBs. Parul has worked as a feature writer for DNA India, India’s premier media portal. 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