Lion Cipher Lab
Write a disaster recovery plan
- GRC / Compliance
- Beginner
- ~60 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
Backups are only half of resilience. The half that decides whether your team survives a ransomware hit, a dead server, or a burst pipe is the plan for getting the critical systems back -- in what order, how fast, and losing how little data. That plan is a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan, and being the person who can write and test one is a defining GRC and resilience skill. The move turns on two numbers every executive and auditor will ask for -- how long can this be down (RTO) and how much data can we afford to lose (RPO) -- and on one uncomfortable fact: a DR plan nobody has tested, resting on…
What you'll learn
- running a basic Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
- identifying critical systems and their tolerances
- defining Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
- defining Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
- choosing a recovery strategy (backups, restores, alternate site or cloud)
- setting a restoration order and recovery roles
- writing a one-page disaster recovery plan
- testing a DR plan with a tabletop exercise
Steps in this lab
- Disaster recovery vs. business continuity, in one breath
- Business Impact Analysis: find what is actually critical
- The two numbers everything turns on: RTO and RPO
- Choose a recovery strategy that can actually hit those numbers
- Name the roles and the contacts before the lights go out
- Draft your one-page DR plan for a real system
- Test the plan -- an untested DR plan is a wish
- Why the tested one-pager wins