BackupDisasterRecovery

BackupDisasterRecovery (BDR) refers to the set of practices, services, and technologies used to protect data and restore information technology operations after a disruption. It combines data backup, which creates copies of data for restoration, with disaster recovery planning, which defines the steps to resume IT services and business processes following events such as hardware failure, cyberattacks, or natural disasters.

Key objectives include the recovery point objective (RPO), the maximum acceptable amount of data loss, and the recovery time objective (RTO), the maximum acceptable downtime. Effective BDR uses a mix of backup types (full, incremental, differential), regular testing, and data retention policies, plus replication and offsite or cloud storage to ensure copies are protected and accessible from a different location.

Disaster recovery architectures range from hot sites ready to take over immediately, to warm and cold sites that require increasing activation time. A pilot light strategy keeps core systems running in a minimal state and scales during a full DR event. DR can be implemented on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid approach, and increasingly via disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).

A formal BDR program also includes a business impact analysis, risk assessment, defined roles and runbooks, security measures, and regular tests or tabletop exercises to validate recovery procedures and improve readiness. Compliance with relevant standards and regulations is often part of the planning.

In practice, organizations use BDR to limit data loss, reduce operational downtime, and support continuity of critical services during incidents, supporting resilience in the face of evolving threats and disruptions.