Disaster Recovery & Backup Planning for SMBs

Most businesses think they have a disaster-recovery plan because they have backups. They are not the same thing. A backup is a copy of data; a recovery plan is how fast and how completely you get running again. Here is how to build the second.

Define RPO and RTO first

Two numbers drive every decision: how much data you can afford to lose (RPO) and how long you can afford to be down (RTO). A shop that can lose an hour of orders has very different needs from a clinic that cannot lose any records. Set these before buying anything.

Follow the 3-2-1 rule

Keep three copies of your data, on two different media, with one off-site (or in the cloud). The off-site copy is what survives fire, theft, and ransomware that encrypts everything on your network — including connected backups.

Test the restore — repeatedly

A backup you have never restored is an assumption, not a safeguard. Schedule restore tests, time them against your RTO, and document the steps so anyone on the team can follow them under pressure. This is also expected for PDPA-relevant data.