Cybersecurity & IT

Disaster Recovery Assessment

Validate whether your recovery time and recovery point objectives are actually achievable. We test the assumptions in your DR plan, review your backup and restore arrangements, and find the gaps before an incident does.

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Overview

A disaster recovery assessment tests whether your IT recovery capability matches your stated objectives. Most organisations have documented recovery time and recovery point objectives. Fewer have validated that their data backup arrangements, runbooks, and dependencies would actually deliver those numbers under real conditions. Human error, natural disaster, ransomware, and outages each create different failure patterns, and a disaster recovery plan that works for a hardware failure may not hold up against a cybersecurity incident that disrupts critical systems.

We review your data backup and restore arrangements, evaluate the disaster recovery plan and its dependencies, validate RTOs and RPOs against what your infrastructure can realistically deliver, and identify single points of failure that would stall recovery. The assessment covers critical business operations and critical systems. Ransomware recovery readiness is a standard part of the assessment, including whether your backup copies are immutable and isolated from the systems they protect. Systems and data that back financial reporting or business continuity obligations receive particular scrutiny.

The output is a prioritised remediation roadmap. Each finding is rated by risk and comes with a practical recommendation, so your stakeholders and recovery team know what to fix first and why. Business impact analysis findings, where available, inform the RTO prioritisation across your business functions.

What’s included

Recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) validation
Data backup and restore review, including immutability and offsite copies
Disaster recovery plan and runbook evaluation
Dependency and single-point-of-failure analysis across critical systems
Ransomware recovery readiness review
Prioritised remediation roadmap
Business continuity and disaster recovery alignment review

How we work

01
Confirm objectives
We confirm the RTOs and RPOs your business needs and verify they are documented and understood by the disaster recovery team and the stakeholders responsible for recovery. Business functions are mapped to their recovery priorities.
02
Review capability
We assess your data backup arrangements, restore processes, and disaster recovery plan against those objectives, checking whether the documented disaster recovery strategy would actually work. Recovery procedures are reviewed for completeness and accuracy.
03
Find the breaks
We identify dependencies and single points of failure that would stall or prevent recovery, including gaps in ransomware resilience, human error scenarios, and natural disaster readiness. Data loss and outage scenarios are modelled against your current arrangements.
04
Roadmap
We deliver a prioritised plan to close the gaps, rated by risk so the most dangerous exposures are addressed first. Regular testing recommendations are included so the disaster recovery plan stays validated over time.

What you get

RTO and RPO validation findings
Data backup, restore, and DR plan review
Single-point-of-failure and dependency analysis
Prioritised remediation roadmap

Frequently asked questions

Do you actually test our backups as part of this assessment?

We review data backup and restore arrangements in detail, including offsite and immutable copies, and validate the assumptions behind the documented process. Where you want to observe an actual restore test, we can help design and oversee it rather than relying on theory alone. Regular testing of the disaster recovery plan is a recommendation we make to every client.

Does the assessment cover ransomware recovery?

Yes. Ransomware recovery readiness is a core part of the assessment, including whether backup copies are immutable, whether a clean recovery path exists, and whether your RTOs remain achievable in a ransomware scenario rather than just a hardware failure or natural disaster. Data loss potential in a ransomware event is specifically evaluated.

How is this different from a business continuity assessment?

A disaster recovery assessment focuses specifically on restoring IT systems, applications, and data after a failure or attack. A business continuity assessment covers the whole organisation's ability to maintain critical business operations across people, processes, and technology. They are complementary and are often done together. The business continuity and disaster recovery disciplines reinforce each other; a disaster recovery plan without a business impact analysis is missing critical prioritisation context.