Disaster Recovery Plan, Business Continuity Plan

A disaster recovery plan is a process to recover and protect infrastructure in the event of a disaster.  What will you do when an incident first occurs?

A business continuity plan is a process to continue your business (possibly at reduced capacity) in the event of a disaster.  How will you recover from your incident?

My real life background is as an analyst for medium sized financial organisations.  I use terms such as these in real life.  In real life, at work, we assume that the worst could happen.  Our building and primary infrastructure could be destroyed or be made unavailable without notice.  If we can not prove that we could recover, we would not be allowed to continue in our industry.


There is an upcoming series of posts, tagged Industry Defence talking about this.  In game, we had an incident, and this series is about not only the theory, but also some of the practice of what to do.  I know of a draft post from a friendly participant that will be published as part of this series.  I will link to any relevant blog/forum post of those involved in this incident, even relaxing some (but not all)  of my safe for work requirements.

I am being deliberately vague about the outcome.  During the incident, I did not know how it would play out, and so readers can share some of that too.


Good business practice ensures you do not put all your assets in one place, subject to a single incident.  I follow this practice, even if it means additional administration, and sometimes a lack of specialisation.

Starting questions to ask yourself, if an incident did occur:

• What backup plans do you have?
• What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? (SWOT analysis)
• Are you diversified enough.  That is, if you are shut down in one place, can you continue elsewhere?