Is SOC 2 Obsolete? Practical Disaster Recovery Plan Template (DRP)

Simply put, RPO is the maximum amount of data your business can afford to lose during an unexpected event like a system crash, cyberattack, or natural disaster. It represents how far back in time you need to recover data from backups.

Practical RTO Examples for SMBs:

• Mission-Critical Applications (CRM, ERP, Payment Systems): RTO: 1-4 hours These applications directly impact your revenue or customer experience. Downtime must be minimized to avoid financial losses or reputational damage.
• Essential Business Operations (Email, Internal Communication Tools): RTO: 4-8 hours These are important for keeping your business running smoothly but won't cause immediate financial loss if they're down for a few hours.
• Important but Non-Critical Applications (File Servers, Non-Critical Databases): RTO: 8-24 hours These systems are useful, but your business can function without them for a short period.
• Low-Priority Systems (Development and Test Environments): RTO: 24-72 hours These systems aren’t part of daily operations, so a longer downtime is acceptable.
• Archival and Historical Data Systems (Backups, Archives): RTO: 72 hours or more These are rarely accessed and can tolerate the longest downtimes.

In the tech world, a Disaster Recovery Plan Template or DRP Template is often referred to as a Disaster Recovery Playbook—both terms mean similar things and are often used interchangeably. This playbook is designed to help your business recover quickly from unexpected events like cyberattacks, data loss, or natural disasters. Keep it simple and clear, so your team knows exactly what steps to take in any crisis.

Key Elements of Your Disaster Recovery Playbook:

Define RTO and RPO for Each Service:

• RTO (Recovery Time Objective): Maximum acceptable downtime for each service.
• RPO (Recovery Point Objective): Maximum acceptable data loss time frame.

Step-by-Step Recovery Plan:

• Outline specific steps to recover each service based on the type of disaster (e.g., cyberattack, hardware failure, natural disaster).

Emergency Contacts:

• Team Leads: List of employees responsible for each critical service, with their roles and contact information.
• Point of Contact: One person in charge of coordinating the recovery and troubleshooting any issues with the disaster recovery plan.
• Vendors and Third Parties: Contact details for software vendors, third-party services, and disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) providers, including steps to activate their services.

Access and Security Information:

• Passwords and Access Keys: Securely store critical passwords, access rights, and configuration details required for recovery.
• Authorization List: Names and roles of team members who have the necessary permissions to access systems and data during recovery.

Facilities and Emergency Response:

• Property Management: Contact information for facility owners and property managers.
• Emergency Responders: Key contacts such as local fire, police, and medical responders.

IT Infrastructure Details:

• IT Setup Overview: If you use a physical data center, include a simple diagram of your IT infrastructure, showing where key servers and recovery sites are located.

Virtualization Details: If your business relies on virtual machines (VMs), outline where they are stored and the basic steps for recovering them.

In real life, we run fire drills or game days to make sure everyone knows what to do in an emergency. The same goes for your disaster recovery playbook — testing it is essential to prepare your team and ensure it actually works when needed. Don’t worry if your first few tests go poorly; that's normal! Each run will teach you what needs tweaking to make your playbook truly effective.

Game days are scheduled activities where you and your team simulate a disaster scenario and follow the playbook step-by-step for a full recovery. Fire drills are a bit more intense (and fun!) because they stress-test your on-call response by simulating a disaster without warning — often in the middle of the night.

During an outage, clear and timely communication can help prevent panic and frustration. Prepare a simple, pre-written message to notify users about the situation—for example, an email explaining that there is an outage, assuring them that you’re working on a fix, and thanking them for their patience. Keep it straightforward: notify users promptly, provide regular updates, and focus on resolving the issue.

During an outage, clear and timely communication can help prevent panic and frustration. Prepare a simple, pre-written message to notify users about the situation—for example, an email explaining that there is an outage, assuring them that you’re working on a fix, and thanking them for their patience. Keep it straightforward: notify users promptly, provide regular updates, and focus on resolving the issue.