Definition of Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is the capability of an organization to respond to and recover from events that negatively impact its processes or systems. This process enables an organization to return to a functional state, typically following natural disasters, crashes, cyber attacks, or other disruptive events affecting technology, processes, and resources.
In the context of cybersecurity, disaster recovery involves restoring data and re-establishing application functionality. However, it can also apply to other areas of company operations.
- The primary goal of disaster recovery is to restore operations to a state as close as possible to the pre-disruption condition.
- The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is a critical measure of the time required to achieve this state.
- For data recovery, maintaining proper backups is essential.
- While data and applications can be fully restored after a disaster, other resources such as finances, personnel, property, and materials may require alternative recovery solutions.