A short guide to disaster recovery

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Everything we would tell a client about disaster recovery in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Why this earns attention

Ask how long you could be down before it really hurts. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

Where to start

That answer sets your budget. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

Common failure modes

Practise the recovery at least once a year. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. 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
• Practise the recovery at least once a year — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.