Disaster Recovery Checklist: Simple Steps for Business Resilience
Effective Disaster Recovery (DR) testing is key to keeping your business running, even during unexpected disruptions. Regular tests ensure your organization can quickly recover, minimize downtime, and meet policy requirements. This guide offers a straightforward checklist for your annual DR tests.
Why Test Your Disaster Recovery Plan?
Testing your DR plan is essential because it helps you:
Confirm Readiness: Validate that your current plan works in real-world scenarios.
Meet Policy & Compliance: Demonstrate alignment with regulatory and contractual requirements.
Find Weak Spots: Detect gaps in processes, systems, and dependencies before a real disaster occurs.
Prepare Your Team: Ensure roles and responsibilities are understood and prepared.
Maintain Business Resilience: Your Disaster Recovery Plan also supports ongoing compliance with controls such as DCF-25 (Disaster Recovery Plan).
Your Annual Disaster Recovery Test Checklist:
Review Your DR Plan:
Verify that the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) plan is up-to-date with current systems, processes, and personnel.
Confirm roles and responsibilities are clearly documented and communicated.
Ensure recovery objectives (RTOs and RPOs) are still aligned with business needs.
Document Test Details:
Record who attended the test, the exact date, and the time it took place.
This documentation is important for accountability and future reference.
Run a Mock Disaster Scenario (Tabletop Exercise):
Conduct a discussion-based tabletop exercise where you simulate a realistic event (e.g., cyberattack, data center outage, ransomware, or natural disaster).
Walk through decisions, communication protocols, and escalation paths.
Identify risks, evaluate responses, and capture process challenges without affecting production systems. (NOTE: This exercise directly satisfies DCF-26 (BCP/DR Tests) requirements).
To request a template, please contact your Customer Success Manager or the Compliance Advisory Team.
Test Communications & Activation:
Verify your emergency communication systems (e.g., alerts, call trees, messaging tools).
Ensure your team can quickly declare a disaster and activate the DR plan.
Measure speed and effectiveness of response coordination.
Perform Technical Recovery Tests:
Backup Systems: Confirm you can operate using your backup systems.
Restore from Backups: Confirm critical data and systems can be fully restored and are functional.
Failover to Alternate Sites: If applicable, test switching operations to secondary sites or cloud failover systems.
Application Recovery: Test priority applications based on business impact analysis (BIA).
Key Outcomes and Continuous Improvement:
Verify Backup Integrity: Don't just restore; make sure the recovered data is accurate, complete and usable.
Lessons Learned Report: Document successes, challenges, and recommendations for improvement.
Plan Improvements: Based on your findings, identify specific ways to improve your DR policies, procedures, and systems. This helps your plan get better over time.
Training & Awareness: Provide refresher training if gaps in roles, tools, or processes are identified.
Frequency & Documentation:
Conduct at least one full DR test annually (tabletop + technical).
Perform periodic validation of critical systems (e.g., quarterly backup verification).
Store documentation securely for compliance and audits.