Recovery Strategy

A recovery strategy is the documented plan for restoring critical business processes and IT systems after a disruption. It defines Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), and the sequence of recovery activities. Per ISO

22301 and BSI Standard 200‑4, the recovery strategy builds directly on the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and considers the criticality levels of all processes.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective) defines the maximum time within which a system must be restored after a failure. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) specifies the maximum acceptable data loss, measured in time since the last backup. Example: An RTO of

4 hours means the system must be running within

4 hours. An RPO of

1 hour means at most

1 hour of transaction data may be lost.

The choice depends on your RTO and RPO: Cold Standby (RTO: days, low cost) suits non-critical systems. Warm Standby (RTO: hours) offers a good balance for important applications. Hot Standby (RTO: minutes) secures highly critical systems with real-time replication. Cloud-based DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) provides scalable options from EUR 200‑500/month for Pilot Light to EUR 800‑2,000/month for Warm Standby.

ISO

22301 requires organizations to establish a Business Continuity Management System with defined recovery strategies based on BIA results. Key requirements include documented RTOs and RPOs per critical function, resource allocation for recovery activities, regular testing and exercising of recovery plans, and continual improvement through post-incident reviews. ISO

27031 further guides IT disaster recovery alignment with ISO 22301.

Since December 2025, NIS-2 obligates affected organizations to maintain operations including backup management and recovery after security incidents. Requirements include documented recovery plans, regular testing of recovery capabilities, incident reporting within

24 hours of detection, and demonstrated BCM alignment. From October 2026, organizations must document regular DR testing.

Best practice recommends full failover tests at least twice annually, partial tests quarterly, and tabletop exercises monthly. NIS-2 regulated entities must document regular testing from October 2026. Critical fact:

93 percent of organizations with untested DR plans become insolvent within one year of a total outage. Testing validates that RTO and RPO targets are actually achievable.

ADVISORI covers the entire process: BIA execution and criticality assessment, RTO/RPO definition per business process, recovery architecture selection (Cold/Warm/Hot Standby, DRaaS), creation of ISO‑22301-aligned recovery runbooks, conducting recovery tests and exercises, and ensuring NIS-2 compliance. We combine technical disaster recovery expertise with regulatory know-how for comprehensive recovery strategies.