Disaster recovery: the questions we get asked most

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. The questions about disaster recovery that come up most often on our calls.

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

Do we need to care about this?

Ask how long you could be down before it really hurts. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge.

How do we know it is working?

Practise the recovery at least once a year. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

What this looks like day to day

The realistic threat for most small businesses is automated and opportunistic, not targeted. Three things worth confirming about disaster recovery before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• That answer sets your budget — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.