What is the difference between backup and disaster recovery?

Backup is a copy of your data you can restore from. Disaster recovery is the wider plan for getting people, systems and services running again after an incident - covering priorities, roles, recovery targets and the steps to bring each system back. Backup is one input into disaster recovery, not a substitute for it.

What is an IT disaster recovery plan?

An IT disaster recovery plan is a documented process that sets out how your business restores IT systems and data after an outage, cyber attack or physical incident. It defines what to recover first, how quickly (RTO), how much data loss is acceptable (RPO), who does what, and how you communicate with staff, customers and suppliers.

What should a disaster recovery plan include?

A good plan includes a prioritised list of systems and data, recovery time and recovery point objectives, backup locations and frequency, step-by-step recovery runbooks, roles and contact details, third-party dependencies, a communication plan, and a schedule for testing and reviewing the plan at least annually.

How often should you test a disaster recovery plan?

At minimum once a year, and after any significant change to your systems, suppliers or team. Smaller table-top exercises every quarter are a light-touch way to keep the plan current and make sure everyone still knows their role.

What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?

Keep at least three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored off-site. It is a simple rule of thumb that protects against most common failure modes - hardware faults, accidental deletion, ransomware and site-level incidents.

What is the difference between backup and disaster recovery?

Backup is a copy of your data you can restore from. Disaster recovery is the wider plan for getting people, systems and services running again after an incident - covering priorities, roles, recovery targets and the steps to bring each system back. Backup is one input into disaster recovery, not a substitute for it.

What is an IT disaster recovery plan?

An IT disaster recovery plan is a documented process that sets out how your business restores IT systems and data after an outage, cyber attack or physical incident. It defines what to recover first, how quickly (RTO), how much data loss is acceptable (RPO), who does what, and how you communicate with staff, customers and suppliers.

What should a disaster recovery plan include?

A good plan includes a prioritised list of systems and data, recovery time and recovery point objectives, backup locations and frequency, step-by-step recovery runbooks, roles and contact details, third-party dependencies, a communication plan, and a schedule for testing and reviewing the plan at least annually.

How often should you test a disaster recovery plan?

At minimum once a year, and after any significant change to your systems, suppliers or team. Smaller table-top exercises every quarter are a light-touch way to keep the plan current and make sure everyone still knows their role.

What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?

Keep at least three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored off-site. It is a simple rule of thumb that protects against most common failure modes - hardware faults, accidental deletion, ransomware and site-level incidents.

Disaster recovery planning: a plain-English guide for UK businesses

What is disaster recovery planning?

Disaster recovery planning is the process of deciding, in advance, how your business will restore its IT systems and data after something goes wrong. That "something" could be a ransomware attack, a failed server, a flood in the office, a cloud outage or a well-meaning colleague deleting the wrong folder. A good plan turns a panic into a checklist.

For most UK SMBs, the goal isn't a Hollywood-grade bunker - it's a documented, tested set of steps that gets email, files, line-of-business apps and phones back in a sensible order, with minimal data loss and clear communication along the way. Our backup and disaster recovery service is built around exactly this.

Backup vs disaster recovery: what's the difference?

People use the terms interchangeably, but they're not the same thing.

Backup is a copy of your data. It answers the question "can we get this file, mailbox or database back?"

Disaster recovery is the wider plan. It answers "how do we get the whole business running again, in what order, and how fast?" Backup is one input into DR, alongside people, processes, third parties and communications.

A business can have perfect backups and still be down for a week because nobody knows which systems to restore first, who has admin access, or how to tell customers what's happening. That gap is what disaster recovery planning closes.

RTO and RPO explained

Two acronyms do most of the heavy lifting in a DR plan.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - how long can this system be down before it hurts? For a finance system at month-end, that might be an hour. For an internal wiki, a day or two might be fine.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) - how much data can you afford to lose? If you back up nightly, your RPO is up to 24 hours. If losing a day of orders would be unacceptable, you need more frequent backups or continuous replication.

Set an RTO and RPO for each critical system. Those numbers drive everything else: backup frequency, storage choices, and whether you need warm standby infrastructure or can rebuild from cold.

Five steps to build an IT disaster recovery plan

1. List and rank your systems. Write down every system and dataset the business relies on. Rank them by how badly you'd be hurt by an outage. Focus your plan on the top of the list first.

2. Set RTO and RPO for each one. Agree the targets with the business, not just IT. Finance, sales and operations will each have a view.

3. Design backups to match. Apply the 3-2-1 rule: three copies, two media types, one off-site. Make sure Microsoft 365 data is backed up separately - Microsoft protects the platform, not your content.

4. Write runbooks. Step-by-step recovery instructions for each critical system, including who has the credentials, which vendor to call, and how long each step usually takes. Assume the person following them is stressed and short on sleep.

5. Test, review, repeat. Run a full test at least once a year and table-top exercises quarterly. A plan you've never tested is a document, not a recovery capability.

Common disaster recovery mistakes

Assuming SaaS providers back up your data. Microsoft, Google and most SaaS vendors protect their infrastructure. Your content, configuration and mailboxes are your responsibility.

Backing up to the same place as production. If ransomware or a fire takes out one, it takes out the other. Off-site or immutable cloud copies are non-negotiable.

Ignoring identity and access. If your identity provider is down or compromised, nobody can log in to anything - including the recovery tooling. Plan for it.

Forgetting the humans. Who declares the disaster? Who talks to customers? Who orders the pizza at 2am? Names and phone numbers matter.

Never testing. The most common cause of a failed recovery is a plan nobody has practised. Testing is where you find the missing password, the expired licence and the runbook that refers to a server retired two years ago.

Where cyber security fits in

Modern DR planning has to assume the incident might be a cyber attack, not just a hardware failure. That changes how you design backups (immutability, air-gapping, credential separation) and how you recover (forensics, containment, staged restore). Pair your DR plan with a strong cyber security baseline so you're preventing incidents as well as recovering from them.

When did you last review your strategy?

If the honest answer is "not this year" or "I'm not sure we have one", that's the place to start. A plan you build now costs a fraction of the downtime, ransom or reputational hit you avoid later.

Explore our backup and disaster recovery service for a fully managed approach covering disaster recovery planning, cloud backup and business continuity, or get in touch to talk it through.