Essential disaster recovery (DR) program activities

A well-organized disaster recovery (DR) program includes the following: policies for disaster recovery; awareness and training programs for employees and emergency staff; forms and checklists to simplify the data gathering process; administrative support to ensure that all relevant activities are scheduled and completed; support for established change management procedures; support for established records management procedures; detailed contact lists with primary and alternate contact data; emergency notification procedures, such as call trees and automated notification systems; sources for emergency funding; and details for activating use of alternate work solutions, ranging from working at home to using a hot site.

Consider using one of the many excellent standards available for developing DR programs. Two of the best are NIST SP 800-34, Contingency Planning Guide for IT Systems and ISO 27031, Guidelines for Information and Communications Technology Readiness for Business Continuity.