What is a "disaster recovery plan" (DRP)?

A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is fundamentally a documented process for recovering hardware, applications, and data that are crucial for business operations following a disaster. This includes outlining the steps necessary to restore IT infrastructure and services to full operation, ensuring that business functions can continue with minimal downtime.

The core components of a DRP typically involve identifying essential systems and data, establishing strategies for backup and recovery, and delineating roles and responsibilities during the recovery process. The plan also serves to minimize the impact on business continuity by ensuring that essential operations can be resumed as quickly and efficiently as possible after an incident.

In contrast, while strategies for employee training, marketing strategies post-disaster, and risk management audits can be important components of an organization's overall resilience strategy, they do not specifically define a disaster recovery plan. Employee training may support the implementation of a DRP, but it does not encompass the technical recovery aspects. A marketing strategy post-disaster focuses on rebuilding the organization's public image or customer relations rather than technical recovery. A risk management audit assesses vulnerabilities and risks but is not a recovery process itself. Thus, focusing on the recovery of IT systems and data is what distinguishes a disaster recovery plan as a critical element of business continuity management.