The disaster recovery plan you've never tested
Backups completed successfully. The restore took 72 hours. The client expected 4.
Everyone has backups. Few have tested recovery. The gap between "backup completed" and "business restored" is where disasters become catastrophes. Recovery time objectives exist on paper but have never been validated in practice.
The scenario:
You need a DR testing process that's rigorous enough to find problems but practical enough to actually execute.
The prompt:
You're creating a disaster recovery testing programme.
Build a process that includes:
- Test types (tabletop, partial restore, full failover)
- Frequency by client tier and system criticality
- Test scenarios (ransomware, hardware failure, cloud outage)
- Success criteria and metrics to track
- Documentation and reporting requirements
- Remediation workflow for discovered gaps
Include a test plan template and post-test report format.