Building and Maintaining a Robust IT Disaster Recovery Plan
Disaster doesn’t wait for a quiet moment, it tests you at your busiest.
Cyberattacks, infrastructure failures, natural disasters, and human error are all real threats to business continuity. For IT managers and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), having a reliable disaster recovery (DR) plan is essential to protecting uptime, preserving data, and ensuring clients or business units can resume operations quickly.
Unfortunately, many organizations either don’t have a DR plan or have one that hasn’t been tested or updated in years. Without a working recovery strategy in place, downtime becomes more likely, more damaging, and much more expensive.
This guide will help you build a resilient, actionable disaster recovery plan, explain how to keep it current, and show how technologies like TruWorkspace and TruOffice simplify the entire process.
Why Every Business Needs a Recovery Plan
Downtime affects more than just productivity. It puts your data, reputation, and compliance status at risk. From ransomware attacks to accidental file deletions, disruptions happen when you least expect them and can cripple business functions within minutes. Even for small and medium-sized businesses, unplanned outages can derail service delivery, delay transactions, and erode customer trust.
For IT leaders and MSPs, disaster recovery is no longer just about server backups. It’s about full system restoration, user access, regulatory compliance, and communication, all under pressure.
Key Elements of a Disaster Recovery Plan
An effective disaster recovery plan outlines how your organization will restore operations when technology fails. It should prioritize speed, clarity, and recoverability. These are the essential components.
1. Inventory Critical Systems and Dependencies
Start with a clear map of your most important applications, infrastructure, and services. This includes not just core systems like accounting or customer databases, but also authentication services, file storage, and remote access environments.
Consider how systems interact. For example, if your email security platform relies on Active Directory to authenticate users, both systems need to be addressed in your recovery plan.
Document:
- Core business applications
- Supporting infrastructure (DNS, Active Directory, VPN, etc.)
- Internal and external system dependencies
- User groups and access requirements
2. Define RTO and RPO
Two of the most important planning metrics are Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). These help define your disaster tolerance and guide infrastructure investments.
- RTO is the maximum acceptable amount of time to restore a service after an outage.
- RPO is the maximum acceptable amount of data loss, measured in time, between the last backup and the incident.
For example, if your accounting software has a 4-hour RTO and a 30-minute RPO, your plan should include fast restoration steps and backups captured at least every 30 minutes.
Implement Reliable Backup and Replication
Backups are the backbone of any DR plan. Without verified, offsite, and recent copies of your critical systems and data, recovery becomes slow and incomplete.
Look for a solution that offers:
- Automated, scheduled backups of key systems
- Encrypted data storage at rest and in transit
- Replication to geographically separate data centres
- Immutable backup snapshots that can’t be altered or deleted by malware
TruPoint’s platform includes these protections by default. All client environments are backed up securely across SSAE 16 SOC II certified Canadian data centres, with built-in redundancy to ensure data availability.
Assign Clear Roles and Responsibilities
Even the best plan is ineffective without a team that knows what to do. Assign specific roles for each stage of the recovery process, and document those responsibilities clearly.
Typical roles include:
- Incident Coordinator – leads the response and decision-making process
- System Recovery Lead – oversees the restoration of IT services
- Communications Manager – handles internal updates and external notifications
- Audit and Compliance Contact – ensures documentation is maintained for insurance or regulatory purposes
Maintain a contact list with backups in case the primary lead is unavailable. Simplicity and clarity matter under pressure.
Test and Update the Plan Regularly
Disaster recovery plans should be tested, reviewed, and revised—not just written once and filed away.
Use the following methods:
- Tabletop exercises – simulate a scenario and walk through team roles and decisions
- Failover drills – test recovery infrastructure by shifting systems to backup environments
- Restore tests – verify the integrity of backups by restoring data to a test environment
Each test uncovers gaps, whether it’s out-of-date contact information, overlooked systems, or unclear decision authority. Schedule tests at least twice per year and after any major infrastructure change.
Keep the Plan Aligned with the Business
A DR plan is not just a technical document—it should be a living part of your operational risk management strategy.
Be sure to:
- Align your plan with current business priorities and operational processes.
- Involve stakeholders from different departments during development and review
- Update the plan to reflect new tools, services, or regulatory requirements
- Track version history, responsible parties, and documentation changes
Use your quarterly IT reviews as an opportunity to revisit your recovery planning and adjust based on real changes, not assumptions.
The TruPoint Advantage
At TruPoint, we believe that disaster recovery should be embedded into your IT environment—not added on as an afterthought. That’s why TruWorkspace and TruOffice are engineered with recovery in mind, from backup automation to system redundancy and built-in compliance tracking.
We help IT leaders and MSPs:
- Centralize system access in a secure, cloud-hosted environment
- Implement automated backup and replication across Canadian data centres
- Reduce RTO and RPO through integrated infrastructure
- Ensure business continuity with a platform designed for rapid response
Whether you manage your own infrastructure or support clients through a managed services model, TruPoint provides a secure foundation you can rely on when it matters most.
Looking to build a disaster recovery plan that actually works when you need it? Get a free trial of TruWorkspaceTM now.