Most businesses have backups. Fewer have a recovery process that leaders, operations staff and technical teams understand. The difference becomes visible only when data must be restored under pressure.
01
1. Nobody can state the recovery priorities
- Critical applications should be ranked by business impact, dependency and acceptable downtime.
- Without an agreed order, technical teams may restore what is easiest rather than what the business needs first.
02
2. Recovery time and recovery point are not defined
- Recovery time describes how long a service can remain unavailable.
- Recovery point describes how much recent data the business can tolerate losing.
- These targets determine architecture, cost and testing requirements.
03
3. Successful backup jobs are treated as recovery tests
- A completed backup confirms that data was copied.
- A recovery test confirms that data, systems, credentials, dependencies and procedures can work together.
04
4. Knowledge exists only in one person’s head
- Runbooks should identify contacts, access requirements, sequence, validation steps and decision authority.
- Procedures should be usable by someone other than the person who designed the system.
05
5. The plan has not changed with the business
- New cloud services, locations, vendors and compliance duties can make an old recovery plan incomplete.
- Recovery planning should be reviewed after major change and tested on a regular schedule.
Conclusion
Backup protects data. Recovery planning protects operations. A credible continuity program needs both.