Training Course 

Overview

Disaster Recovery Plan Familiarization is a professional training course designed to provide employees, managers, business continuity professionals, IT personnel, and operational teams with a practical understanding of disaster recovery planning, organizational resilience, and the procedures required to restore critical business services following disruptive events. The course introduces the principles, terminology, processes, roles, responsibilities, and technologies associated with disaster recovery planning and helps participants understand how organizations prepare for, respond to, recover from, and learn from incidents that affect critical systems, facilities, people, data, and business operations.

This comprehensive disaster recovery training course covers business impact analysis, risk assessment, critical business processes, recovery priorities, recovery strategies, backup and restoration, alternative work arrangements, emergency communications, technology recovery, data protection, and disaster recovery testing. Participants learn how Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) connect with Business Continuity Plans (BCPs), incident response procedures, crisis management structures, and organizational risk management. Practical tools and approaches such as business impact analysis templates, risk registers, recovery priority matrices, dependency maps, recovery checklists, communication trees, backup schedules, recovery runbooks, and exercise evaluation forms are incorporated throughout the program.

The course also introduces internationally recognized standards and frameworks relevant to disaster recovery and business resilience, including ISO 22301 for business continuity management systems, ISO 22313 guidance, ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27002 information security principles, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NIST contingency planning guidance, and established recovery concepts such as Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO), Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPD), Minimum Business Continuity Objective (MBCO), redundancy, failover, backup, recovery tiers, and alternate processing facilities. Participants use these concepts to understand how organizations design recovery strategies appropriate to their operational and technology requirements.

By the end of this 10-day Disaster Recovery Plan Familiarization Training Course, participants will be able to explain the purpose and structure of a Disaster Recovery Plan, identify their responsibilities during a disruption, interpret recovery priorities, support business impact analysis activities, follow emergency and recovery procedures, participate effectively in disaster recovery exercises, and contribute to continuous improvement of organizational resilience. Through case studies, practical exercises, tabletop simulations, plan reviews, recovery scenarios, and a final capstone exercise, participants gain practical familiarity with the processes required to maintain and restore critical operations during and after disruptive events.

Course Duration

10 Days

Target Participants

This course is designed for:

·         Employees who have responsibilities within organizational disaster recovery plans

·         IT professionals and technology support teams

·         Business continuity and resilience professionals

·         Risk management and compliance personnel

·         Operations and facilities managers

·         Department heads and line managers

·         Crisis management and emergency response teams

·         Information security professionals

·         System administrators and infrastructure teams

·         Data protection and backup administrators

·         Human resources and administrative personnel

·         Finance, procurement, and supply chain professionals

·         Internal auditors and governance professionals

·         Organizations seeking to improve disaster recovery awareness and preparedness

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

·         Explain the purpose, principles, and components of Disaster Recovery Plans

·         Distinguish disaster recovery, business continuity, crisis management, and incident response

·         Identify common operational, technological, environmental, and human-related disruptions

·         Understand organizational roles and responsibilities during disaster recovery activities

·         Participate effectively in business impact analysis and risk assessment processes

·         Identify critical business services, systems, applications, data, facilities, and dependencies

·         Apply RTO, RPO, MTPD, and recovery priority concepts appropriately

·         Understand backup, restoration, redundancy, failover, and alternate recovery strategies

·         Interpret disaster recovery procedures, recovery runbooks, communication plans, and escalation structures

·         Apply ISO 22301, NIST contingency planning principles, and relevant information security frameworks to disaster recovery activities

·         Participate effectively in disaster recovery tests, tabletop exercises, simulations, and plan reviews

·         Identify weaknesses, gaps, dependencies, and improvement opportunities in existing recovery plans

·         Understand disaster recovery requirements for cloud, remote, hybrid, and distributed environments

·         Support effective communication and coordination during disruptive events

·         Contribute to disaster recovery plan maintenance, review, testing, and continuous improvement

Course Content

Module: Disaster Recovery Planning, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery

Day 1: Fundamentals of Disaster Recovery Planning

1.      Introduction to Disaster Recovery
Participants explore the purpose, scope, principles, and importance of disaster recovery planning and examine how organizations prepare to restore critical operations after disruptive events.

2.      Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity, and Crisis Management
The session distinguishes Disaster Recovery Plans, Business Continuity Plans, Crisis Management Plans, Emergency Response Plans, and Incident Response Plans and explains how these plans work together.

3.      Types of Disasters and Disruptive Events
Participants examine natural disasters, fires, floods, power failures, equipment failures, cyber incidents, data loss, infrastructure outages, supply chain disruptions, human errors, and other operational threats.

4.      Organizational Impact of Disasters
The training examines financial, operational, technological, legal, regulatory, customer, employee, safety, and reputational consequences of prolonged disruption.

5.      Disaster Recovery Lifecycle
Participants learn the stages of preparedness, prevention, response, recovery, restoration, validation, lessons learned, and continuous improvement.

6.      Key Disaster Recovery Terminology
Participants become familiar with RTO, RPO, MTPD, recovery priority, recovery strategy, failover, failback, redundancy, backup, recovery site, recovery team, and recovery procedure terminology.

7.      Disaster Recovery Roles and Responsibilities
The session introduces executive sponsors, recovery coordinators, IT teams, business process owners, communications teams, facilities teams, vendors, and employees and explains their responsibilities.

8.      Disaster Recovery Governance
Participants examine policy ownership, management oversight, approval structures, documentation requirements, accountability, and governance arrangements.

9.      Disaster Recovery Case Study
Participants analyze a realistic organization affected by a major operational disruption and identify critical services, recovery priorities, dependencies, and initial response requirements.

10.  Disaster Recovery Familiarization Exercise
Participants complete a basic disaster scenario exercise in which they identify immediate priorities, responsible teams, essential resources, and initial recovery actions.

Day 2: Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis

1.      Introduction to Disaster Recovery Risk Assessment
Participants learn how organizations identify threats, vulnerabilities, likelihood, impact, and existing controls affecting business continuity and recovery.

2.      Identifying Critical Business Processes
The session introduces methods for identifying essential processes, services, systems, facilities, people, suppliers, and resources required for continued operations.

3.      Business Impact Analysis Fundamentals
Participants examine the purpose and structure of Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and how it supports recovery planning and prioritization.

4.      Impact Categories and Assessment
Participants assess financial, operational, customer, regulatory, legal, safety, reputational, and strategic impacts associated with business disruption.

5.      Recovery Time Objective
The training explains RTO and demonstrates how recovery time requirements influence recovery strategies and technology decisions.

6.      Recovery Point Objective
Participants examine RPO and understand how data-loss tolerance influences backup frequency, replication, storage, and recovery solutions.

7.      Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption
Participants explore MTPD and its relationship to business survival, service restoration, RTO, and continuity requirements.

8.      Dependency and Resource Mapping
Participants identify dependencies among people, applications, infrastructure, facilities, data, suppliers, utilities, and communication systems.

9.      BIA Practical Exercise
Participants complete a simplified BIA using a structured template to identify critical processes, impacts, dependencies, RTOs, RPOs, and recovery priorities.

10.  Risk and BIA Case Study
Participants analyze a fictional organization's risk register and BIA results and develop recommendations for improving recovery priorities and resilience.

Day 3: Disaster Recovery Strategies and Recovery Requirements

1.      Recovery Strategy Development
Participants explore how organizations select appropriate recovery strategies based on business requirements, risk exposure, budget, technology, and recovery objectives.

2.      Recovery Priority Classification
The session introduces recovery tiers and prioritization methods for critical, important, and non-critical business services.

3.      Backup and Data Recovery Strategies
Participants examine full, incremental, differential, immutable, off-site, and cloud-based backup approaches and their relevance to disaster recovery.

4.      Data Replication and Synchronization
The training introduces replication concepts, synchronous and asynchronous replication, geographic redundancy, and recovery implications.

5.      High Availability and Redundancy
Participants explore redundancy across servers, networks, storage, power, facilities, and other critical infrastructure components.

6.      Disaster Recovery Sites
The session examines hot sites, warm sites, cold sites, mobile recovery facilities, alternate offices, and cloud-based recovery environments.

7.      Manual and Alternative Work Procedures
Participants learn how organizations maintain essential operations when automated systems, facilities, or technology services are unavailable.

8.      Recovery Resource Requirements
Participants identify requirements for personnel, equipment, facilities, applications, data, communications, vendors, transportation, and essential supplies.

9.      Recovery Strategy Exercise
Teams develop recovery strategies for selected business processes based on defined RTO, RPO, resource, and dependency requirements.

10.  Recovery Strategy Case Study
Participants compare multiple recovery options for a fictional organization and justify the most appropriate solutions based on risk, cost, recovery objectives, and operational requirements.

Day 4: Disaster Recovery Plan Structure and Documentation

1.      Anatomy of a Disaster Recovery Plan
Participants examine the typical structure and essential components of a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan.

2.      Recovery Plan Scope and Objectives
The session explains how to define plan boundaries, covered services, assumptions, recovery priorities, objectives, and limitations.

3.      Recovery Team Structure
Participants examine recovery teams, leadership structures, technical teams, business representatives, communications personnel, and external support providers.

4.      Roles, Responsibilities, and Contact Lists
Participants learn how to document responsibilities, escalation contacts, alternates, emergency numbers, vendor contacts, and communication channels.

5.      Recovery Procedures and Runbooks
The training introduces step-by-step recovery procedures, technical runbooks, checklists, dependencies, prerequisites, validation steps, and escalation points.

6.      Emergency Communication Plans
Participants develop communication structures for employees, customers, suppliers, regulators, management, emergency services, and other stakeholders.

7.      Recovery Decision-Making and Escalation
Participants learn how recovery decisions are authorized, documented, escalated, and communicated during high-pressure situations.

8.      Plan Documentation Standards
The session covers document control, version management, ownership, approval, secure storage, accessibility, distribution, and review schedules.

9.      Disaster Recovery Plan Review Exercise
Participants review a sample Disaster Recovery Plan and identify missing sections, outdated information, unclear responsibilities, incomplete procedures, and recovery gaps.

10.  Plan Development Case Study
Participants work in teams to design the core structure of a Disaster Recovery Plan for a fictional organization facing multiple operational and technology risks.

Day 5: IT Disaster Recovery and Technology Resilience

1.      IT Disaster Recovery Fundamentals
Participants examine the role of technology recovery in restoring applications, infrastructure, networks, databases, endpoints, and digital services.

2.      Critical Applications and Systems
Participants identify mission-critical applications, supporting systems, infrastructure components, databases, interfaces, and technology dependencies.

3.      Server and Infrastructure Recovery
The session covers recovery of physical and virtual servers, storage, operating systems, infrastructure services, and supporting components.

4.      Network and Connectivity Recovery
Participants examine network redundancy, alternate connectivity, DNS, routing, internet access, remote access, and communication recovery requirements.

5.      Database Recovery
The training explores database backup, restoration, replication, consistency checks, transaction recovery, and validation procedures.

6.      Backup Architecture and Recovery Testing
Participants examine backup schedules, retention, off-site storage, backup monitoring, restoration testing, and recovery verification.

7.      Cloud Disaster Recovery
The session introduces cloud-based backup, replication, infrastructure recovery, availability zones, geographic redundancy, and shared responsibility considerations.

8.      Cybersecurity and Disaster Recovery Integration
Participants examine how ransomware, account compromise, malware, data corruption, and other cyber incidents affect recovery planning and restoration decisions.

9.      Technology Recovery Exercise
Participants develop a recovery sequence for a scenario involving a major infrastructure outage and identify required systems, personnel, dependencies, and validation activities.

10.  IT Disaster Recovery Case Study
Teams analyze a technology disruption affecting a critical business service and develop an end-to-end recovery approach from initial assessment through service restoration.

Day 6: People, Facilities, Suppliers, and Operational Recovery

1.      People-Centered Disaster Recovery
Participants examine workforce availability, succession, cross-training, emergency contacts, employee safety, and alternative staffing arrangements.

2.      Alternative Work Locations
The session explores alternate offices, remote work, temporary facilities, shared workspaces, and other arrangements for maintaining essential operations.

3.      Facility Recovery Requirements
Participants identify requirements for buildings, power, water, HVAC, physical access, security, equipment, workspace, and other facilities-related resources.

4.      Emergency Supplies and Recovery Resources
Participants examine essential supplies, equipment, transportation, communication resources, protective equipment, and logistical requirements.

5.      Third-Party and Supplier Dependencies
The training explores how suppliers, technology providers, utilities, logistics providers, and outsourced services affect organizational recovery.

6.      Supplier Continuity and Recovery Requirements
Participants learn how to assess supplier recovery capabilities, contractual requirements, service-level expectations, and alternative sourcing options.

7.      Workforce Communication During Disruptions
Participants develop practical communication approaches for notifying employees about incidents, work arrangements, safety requirements, and recovery priorities.

8.      Remote and Hybrid Workforce Recovery
The session examines recovery considerations for distributed employees, remote access, collaboration platforms, devices, connectivity, and secure working environments.

9.      Operational Recovery Exercise
Participants respond to a scenario in which the primary workplace becomes unavailable and develop an alternative operating model for maintaining critical services.

10.  People and Facilities Case Study
Participants analyze a facility-disruption scenario involving workforce availability, supplier dependencies, communication challenges, and technology limitations and develop coordinated recovery actions.

Day 7: Standards, Frameworks, Governance, and Compliance

1.      ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management
Participants explore the purpose and key concepts of ISO 22301 and its role in establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving business continuity capabilities.

2.      ISO 22313 Guidance
The session examines practical guidance for implementing business continuity management principles and translating continuity requirements into organizational practices.

3.      NIST Contingency Planning Principles
Participants examine NIST approaches to information-system contingency planning, recovery strategies, testing, maintenance, and plan development.

4.      NIST Cybersecurity Framework and Recovery
The training connects the Recover function of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework with recovery planning, communication, restoration, and continuous improvement.

5.      ISO/IEC 27001 and Information Security Continuity
Participants explore how information security management systems support continuity, availability, recovery, access control, and protection of information during disruptive events.

6.      ISO/IEC 27002 Recovery-Related Controls
Participants examine relevant information security controls involving backup, redundancy, ICT readiness, access management, incident management, and operational resilience.

7.      Disaster Recovery Governance and Accountability
The session examines management responsibilities, policy approval, risk ownership, audit oversight, compliance, and performance monitoring.

8.      Legal, Regulatory, and Contractual Considerations
Participants explore how regulatory obligations, data protection requirements, contractual commitments, customer agreements, and industry requirements influence recovery planning.

9.      Standards Alignment Exercise
Participants map selected Disaster Recovery Plan components against ISO 22301, NIST, and information security control principles.

10.  Governance Case Study
Participants evaluate a fictional organization's disaster recovery governance structure, identify compliance and accountability gaps, and recommend improvements.

Day 8: Disaster Recovery Testing, Exercises, and Validation

1.      Purpose of Disaster Recovery Testing
Participants examine why recovery plans must be tested and how testing validates procedures, people, technology, communication channels, and recovery objectives.

2.      Types of Disaster Recovery Exercises
The session introduces walkthroughs, tabletop exercises, simulations, technical recovery tests, failover tests, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises.

3.      Test Planning and Objectives
Participants learn how to establish test objectives, scope, scenarios, participants, assumptions, success criteria, resources, and safety controls.

4.      Tabletop Exercise Facilitation
Participants learn how to facilitate structured discussions around realistic disaster scenarios without unnecessarily disrupting production operations.

5.      Technical Recovery Testing
The training examines restoration testing, backup validation, system recovery, failover, application testing, network recovery, and service validation.

6.      Communication Testing
Participants test emergency contact lists, notification channels, escalation paths, communication templates, and stakeholder coordination.

7.      Recovery Objective Validation
Participants compare actual recovery performance with RTO, RPO, MTPD, and other defined recovery objectives.

8.      Exercise Evaluation and Documentation
The session covers observations, evidence collection, performance assessment, issues, lessons learned, corrective actions, and management reporting.

9.      Disaster Recovery Tabletop Simulation
Participants complete a structured scenario involving a major system outage and must coordinate assessment, communication, prioritization, recovery, and restoration decisions.

10.  Test Results and Improvement Exercise
Participants analyze simulated exercise findings and develop a corrective-action plan addressing procedural, technical, organizational, and communication weaknesses.

Day 9: Advanced Disaster Recovery, Resilience, and Crisis Scenarios

1.      Integrated Business Resilience
Participants explore how disaster recovery integrates with enterprise risk management, business continuity, cybersecurity, crisis management, operational resilience, and organizational resilience.

2.      Ransomware and Data Recovery Scenarios
The session examines recovery planning for situations involving encrypted or corrupted systems, unavailable backups, compromised credentials, and the need for secure restoration.

3.      Major Cloud and Technology Outages
Participants analyze recovery considerations when critical cloud platforms, SaaS applications, data centers, networks, or technology providers become unavailable.

4.      Supply Chain and Third-Party Disruption
Participants examine recovery challenges caused by supplier failures, logistics disruptions, telecommunications outages, outsourced service interruptions, and critical vendor dependencies.

5.      Geographic and Multi-Site Disasters
The training examines recovery strategies for organizations operating across multiple locations and scenarios affecting an entire region.

6.      Crisis Communication and Stakeholder Management
Participants learn how to coordinate accurate, timely, consistent, and controlled communication during major disruptions.

7.      Recovery Prioritization Under Pressure
Participants practice making recovery decisions when resources are limited, multiple systems are unavailable, information is incomplete, and competing priorities exist.

8.      Disaster Recovery Metrics and Readiness Indicators
The session introduces measures such as plan coverage, exercise completion, recovery success rates, RTO achievement, backup success, unresolved findings, and recovery readiness.

9.      Advanced Disaster Scenario Exercise
Teams respond to a complex scenario involving technology failure, facility disruption, supplier dependency, communication challenges, and workforce constraints.

10.  Resilience Improvement Case Study
Participants evaluate an organization's disaster recovery maturity and develop an advanced improvement roadmap covering governance, technology, people, suppliers, testing, and continuous improvement.

Day 10: Disaster Recovery Capstone, Plan Review, and Continuous Improvement

1.      Disaster Recovery Program Maturity
Participants examine the characteristics of developing, established, measured, and continuously improving disaster recovery programs.

2.      Disaster Recovery Plan Gap Assessment
Participants learn how to review existing plans for missing information, outdated procedures, unclear ownership, insufficient resources, and untested recovery assumptions.

3.      Plan Maintenance and Change Management
The session covers scheduled reviews, changes in technology, organizational restructuring, new suppliers, facility changes, application changes, and updates to recovery procedures.

4.      Recovery Documentation and Knowledge Management
Participants examine how organizations maintain recovery knowledge, technical documentation, contact information, runbooks, inventories, diagrams, and lessons learned.

5.      Continuous Improvement and Corrective Actions
Participants learn how to convert test findings, incidents, audits, and operational changes into measurable corrective and preventive actions.

6.      Disaster Recovery Readiness Assessment
Participants conduct a structured readiness review covering people, processes, technology, facilities, suppliers, communication, documentation, testing, and governance.

7.      Comprehensive Disaster Recovery Tabletop Exercise
Participants complete a multi-stage simulation involving a major disruption and must activate recovery procedures, identify priorities, coordinate teams, communicate with stakeholders, and restore critical services.

8.      Capstone Disaster Recovery Plan Review
Participants evaluate a complete sample Disaster Recovery Plan and assess its scope, governance, recovery objectives, procedures, dependencies, communication arrangements, technical strategies, and testing approach.

9.      Organizational Disaster Recovery Improvement Plan
Participants develop a practical improvement roadmap identifying priorities, responsible owners, required resources, implementation timelines, testing requirements, and performance indicators.

10.  Final Disaster Recovery Competency Evaluation
Participants complete a comprehensive assessment combining disaster scenarios, BIA interpretation, recovery-priority decisions, RTO/RPO application, plan analysis, standards alignment, tabletop decision-making, and development of practical disaster recovery recommendations.