Disaster Recovery (DR)

Disaster Recovery (DR) is the set of all technical and organizational measures with which IT systems are restored after a serious outage – for example after natural events, power failures, infrastructure problems, operating errors or cyberattacks.

The aim is to make critical applications and data available again within a defined time (recovery time objective) and with acceptable data loss (recovery point objective). A functioning DR concept combines backup, replication, prioritized restart plans and regular tests. The order is decisive: Which systems must come back first, which dependencies exist? This is exactly where theory and practice part ways – untested plans regularly fail in an emergency because of unknown dependencies.

Disaster recovery must be distinguished from Cyber Recovery: DR aims at technical availability after an outage, whereas cyber recovery must additionally ensure the trustworthiness of the restored environment after an attack. Both are building blocks of overarching Cyber Resilience.