IT Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) ([RES-PROC-005])
1. Purpose
To provide detailed technical procedures for recovering IT infrastructure, systems, and data at an alternate site in the event of a disaster.
2. Scope
This plan applies to all critical IT systems, infrastructure, and data mandated to support essential business functions as defined in the Business Impact Analysis (BIA).
3. Overview
This document outlines the technical steps for the IT Disaster Recovery Team to respond to a declared disaster. It covers team activation, damage assessment, failover to the secondary recovery site, data restoration, and system validation to ensure a timely and effective recovery of IT services.
4. Procedure
| Step | Phase | Who | What |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Activation & Assessment | BCDR Steering Committee | Declare a disaster and formally activate the DRP. |
| 2 | DR Team Lead | Activate the Disaster Recovery (DR) Team. | |
| 3 | DR Team | Conduct an initial damage assessment to understand the extent of the outage. | |
| 4 | Recovery | DR Team (Infrastructure) | Initiate failover procedures for network, servers, and other infrastructure to the secondary site (including cloud resources). |
| 5 | DR Team (Data) | Restore application data from the most recent, consistent backups, respecting defined RPOs. | |
| 6 | DR Team (Applications) | Bring critical applications online at the recovery site. | |
| 7 | Validation & Resumption | DR Team / Business Users | Validate that recovered systems and data are functional and consistent. |
| 8 | DR Team Lead | Formally declare that IT systems are operational and ready to support business functions. |
5. Standards Compliance
| Procedure Step(s) | Standard/Framework | Control Reference |
|---|---|---|
| 1-8 | SOC 2 | A1.2 |
| 1-8 | HIPAA Security Rule | 45 CFR § 164.308(a)(7)(ii)(B) |
6. Artifact(s)
A log of all recovery activities performed, including timelines, actions taken, and the results of system validation tests.
7. Definitions
Failover: The process of switching to a redundant or standby computer server, system, or network upon the failure or abnormal termination of the previously active application, server, system, or network.
Disaster Recovery (DR) Site: A secondary location where an organization can relocate its technology and operations following a disaster.
8. Responsibilities
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| DR Team Lead | Manages and coordinates all technical recovery activities during a disaster. |
| DR Team (Infrastructure) | Responsible for recovering core infrastructure components like networks and servers. |
| DR Team (Data) | Responsible for restoring data from backups. |
| DR Team (Applications) | Responsible for bringing business applications back online and validating their functionality. |