Disaster Recovery (DRP): Would Your Company Survive a Hack Today? (The Difference Between Panic and Protocol)

IT disaster recovery plan

Imagine arriving at the office on any given Tuesday. You try to open your email, and it doesn’t load. The ERP shows a connection error. Suddenly, the support phones start ringing non-stop. On the main server screen, a single message appears in red letters on a black background: “All your files have been encrypted. Pay 50 BTC to recover the key.”

Welcome to the era of Ransomware.

For a CEO or a Chief Risk Officer, this is not a movie scene; it is a real statistical possibility. 60% of small and medium-sized businesses that suffer massive data loss close permanently within the following 6 months.

The question is not if they will try to hack you, but when. And more importantly: How fast can you get back up?

Many executives mistakenly believe that “having a backup on a hard drive” is enough. It is not. A modern IT disaster recovery plan (DRP) is not about saving data; it is about operational continuity. At Koud, we design resilience architectures that turn a potential disaster into a minor 15-minute inconvenience.

Backups vs. DRP: Understanding the Vital Difference

It is crucial to distinguish between simply copying files and having a recovery plan.

• Backup: Having a copy of your data. If a file is deleted, you restore it. But if the server burns down or the operating system gets encrypted, the backup alone is useless because you have nowhere to restore it.
• DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan): The complete infrastructure strategy. It includes contingency servers, network, applications, and processes to switch operations from Site A (compromised) to Site B (clean) in record time.

RTO and RPO: The Metrics That Define Your Survival

When we design a DRP at Koud, we define two critical variables with you:

1. RTO (Recovery Time Objective): How long can you afford to be down? 1 hour? 1 day?
2. RPO (Recovery Point Objective): How much information can you afford to lose? The last hour’s data? Yesterday’s?

If your current RTO is “we’ll see how long it takes to fix it,” your company is in mortal danger.

The 3-2-1 Rule and Immutable Backup

Modern Ransomware is smart. The first thing it does upon entering your network is not to encrypt your files, but to search for and destroy your connected backups so you have no choice but to pay.

To counter this, at Koud we implement the 3-2-1 Rule with a modern twist:

• 3 copies of your data.
• 2 different media (e.g., Local Disk and Cloud).
• 1 copy Off-site.
• + Immutability: This is the key. We configure an immutable backup ransomware solution in the cloud (using technologies like AWS S3 Object Lock). This means that once the backup is written, no one, not even the system administrator (or the hacker who stole their credentials), can modify or delete it for a defined period. It is your ultimate insurance policy.

Cloud DRP: Automation That Saves Jobs

Formerly, a DRP meant paying rent for a second building with duplicate servers “just in case” (Cold Site), which was extremely expensive.

Today, thanks to the cloud and “Infrastructure as Code” (IaC), we can have your contingency site “sleeping” (turned off) in AWS or Azure, costing almost zero.

When a disaster is declared, our automated system wakes up that infrastructure, installs applications, restores the last immutable copy, and redirects traffic.

What used to take days of manual configuration is now a script that executes a complete recovery in minutes.

The Cost of Downtime

Do the quick math:

(Annual Revenue / 365 days) + (Salaries of idle employees) + (Compliance fines) + (Reputation cost) = Daily Disaster Cost.

For many companies, one day without systems costs more than the implementation of the entire Cloud DRP for a year. Investing in recovery is not a luxury; it is a fiduciary responsibility.

Checklist: Are You Ready for the Worst?

If you answer “No” or “I don’t know” to any of these questions, your business is vulnerable:

• Have you tested restoring your backups in the last 3 months to see if they work?
• Do you have a copy of your data disconnected from the network (Air-gapped or Immutable)?
• Does your team know exactly who to call and what to do in the first hour of an attack?
• Can you operate at an alternate site in less than 4 hours?

Frequently Asked Questions

Is DRP only for hackers?

No. A DRP protects you against everything: fires in the server room, floods, human errors (an employee accidentally deleting the database), and critical hardware failures.

Is it very expensive to have a Cloud DRP?

It is much cheaper than the traditional model. By using the cloud, you only pay for backup storage (which is cheap) and pay for full-power servers only when you turn them on during an emergency or drill.

How often should we test the DRP?

We recommend running a recovery drill at least twice a year. At Koud, we automate these tests to deliver a “Recovery Success” report without interrupting your real operation.

Conclusion

Hope is not a business strategy. Believing that “it won’t happen to us” is the riskiest bet you can make with your company’s assets.

A robust IT disaster recovery plan gives you the superpower to look a disaster in the eye and say: “No problem, we keep operating.”