Disaster Recovery

What Does Disaster Recovery Mean?

Disaster recovery in information technology is part of security planning and is developed in conjunction with a business continuity plan. Disaster recovery is a set of policies and procedures which focus on protecting an organization from any significant effects in case of a negative event, which may include cyberattacks, natural disasters or building or device failures. Disaster recovery helps in designing strategies that can restore hardware, applications and data quickly for business continuity.

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Techopedia Explains Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery can be considered as a subset of business continuity. In order to design a proper disaster recovery strategy, risk assessment and business impact analysis need to be completed. These steps help in identifying the information technology services that can support the critical business activities of the organization. Again, these steps would also help in bringing the recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives. Disaster recovery measures can be classified mainly into three types:

  • Preventive measures
  • Corrective measures
  • Detective measures

Preventive measures aim at preventing an event from occurring. Corrective measures are for correcting a system in case of a negative event or disaster. Detective measures focus on detecting and discovering negative events.

A good disaster recovery plan helps in achieving business continuity even in case of disasters and negative events. The security management team of most organizations have regular checks and exercises in order to assure good disaster recovery measures are followed by individual department and the organization as a whole.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…