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    Disaster Recovery

    Web design & development
    Editorially reviewed on: 1 source
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    The short answer · 13 words

    In short

    Strategies and measures to quickly restore the IT infrastructure after critical system failures.

    Flow-alerta.cab (2026): Disaster Recovery. https://flow-alerta.cab/en/glossar/disaster-recovery. Editorially reviewed on: 09 October 2026.

    How much detail would you like?

    Practical

    Relevant to business-critical IT; setting recovery goals and tested operations.

    Possible example: A shop operator practices recovery from a separately stored backup and measures downtime and lost data.

    Create contingency plans for on-premises and cloud systems, automated cloud backups and ransomware prevention.

    At a glance

    Core
    Disaster Recovery includes policies, tools, and automated backups to quickly restart business-critical systems, databases, and web applications after natural disasters, cyberattacks, or hardware defects.
    Use
    Relevant to business-critical IT; setting recovery goals and tested operations.
    Example
    Possible example: A shop operator practices recovery from a separately stored backup and measures downtime and lost data.
    Limits
    Create backups, but never test recovery (recovery drill); RTO and RPO are unrealistic or do not define at all.

    In context

    Business Continuity

    An organization’s ability to continue prioritized products and services during and after disruptions at a pre-determined acceptable level.

    Questions about this term

    What are RTO and RPO?

    RTO is the targeted time to recovery; RPO describes the tolerated loss period of data. Both are planning goals, not automatically adhered to guarantees.

    Is a backup enough?

    No. Applications, accesses, dependencies and the restoration itself must also be planned and tested.

    All details and background

    Disaster Recovery includes policies, tools, and automated backups to quickly restart business-critical systems, databases, and web applications after natural disasters, cyberattacks, or hardware defects.

    ELI5 – Explained simply

    Like a replacement key and a contingency plan for your home in case the key is lost or a pipe break happens.

    Why it matters in practice

    Relevant to business-critical IT; setting recovery goals and tested operations.

    Example

    Possible example: A shop operator practices recovery from a separately stored backup and measures downtime and lost data.

    Pitfalls and limits

    • Create backups, but never test recovery (recovery drill); RTO and RPO are unrealistic or do not define at all.

    Origin & history

    IT emergency planning is an established area of expertise. NIST published Revision 1 of its Emergency Planning Guide in 2010; this is not an indication of the origin of the concept.

    Use in mid-sized companies

    • Create contingency plans for on-premises and cloud systems, automated cloud backups and ransomware prevention.

    Related terms

    Matching Flow-alerta service

    Websites & web applicationsWebsites & Web Applications – Recovery Requirements for Web Operation

    Matching tool / use case

    View use casesUse Case: Restore a web application from a documented test backup.

    Sources

    • csrc.nist.govNIST (2010, aktualisierte Fassung vom 11.11.2010), SP 800-34 Rev. 1: Contingency Planning Guide for Federal Information Systems

    Quellen geprüft am 09.10.2026.

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