Certified: The CRISC Prepcast

Welcome to The Bare Metal Cyber CRISC Prepcast. This series helps you prepare for the exam with focused explanations and practical context.
Disaster recovery management is the structured effort to bring technology services and infrastructure back online after a disruption. It is not just about fixing broken systems—it is about maintaining controlled continuity when events go wrong. Whether the disruption is triggered by a natural disaster, a technical failure, or even a human-caused incident, the goal is always the same: reduce the duration of downtime and limit how much data is lost. Although disaster recovery is a key part of business continuity, it focuses specifically on the technology layers. CRISC professionals must ensure that this recovery process fits the organization’s defined risk appetite and aligns with its tolerance for service interruption. Knowing how to manage this alignment is a core skill that will appear throughout the exam.
The primary purpose of disaster recovery is to restore essential systems in a time frame that is acceptable to the business. This means understanding recovery time objectives and ensuring that technology services meet those thresholds. Equally important is the ability to minimize how much data might be lost, which is where recovery point objectives come into play. During the recovery process, data must remain trustworthy, systems must remain accessible, and all recovery activities must keep security intact. Communication plays a major role as well, especially under crisis conditions. Every person involved must know their role, understand the situation, and rely on documented procedures to prevent confusion. In exam scenarios, questions on disaster recovery often center around how much time is lost, how much data is lost, and how testing is conducted. You must be ready to spot gaps in preparedness.
Every effective disaster recovery program contains a set of core elements that define how recovery should be carried out. At the center of this is the disaster recovery plan, which lays out step-by-step actions, roles, and responsibilities. Surrounding this plan is an inventory of critical assets and systems, organized by priority, so recovery focuses on what matters most first. The program must also define where systems can be recovered—whether at hot sites that are ready instantly, warm sites that require partial setup, or cold sites that need full preparation. Increasingly, organizations use cloud failover solutions as part of this design. Alongside these technical preparations is a communications plan that covers both internal messaging and external disclosures if needed. Finally, a strong disaster recovery program includes a built-in process for testing, reviewing, and improving the plan over time so it never becomes outdated.
To understand disaster recovery management, you must know how recovery time and recovery point objectives work. The recovery time objective, or RTO, defines the maximum amount of time that a system can be down before it creates unacceptable harm. The recovery point objective, or RPO, tells you how much data the business can afford to lose in terms of time—such as an hour’s worth of transactions or a day’s worth of updates. These objectives are established during the business impact analysis and serve as guiding metrics for all disaster recovery architecture. If the actual recovery capabilities fall short of these objectives, there is a major misalignment that creates both operational and exam-level risks. On the test, this kind of misalignment is often presented as a trap where the recovery targets do not match the reality of the recovery tools. Recognizing and correcting this mismatch is a critical exam skill.
Creating a disaster recovery plan means thinking through every critical system, understanding how those systems depend on each other, and determining which ones must be recovered first. Once this is mapped out, the plan must define the exact steps needed to recover each system, who is responsible, and how decisions will be escalated if problems occur. Good plans also integrate tightly with other processes, including incident response protocols, asset management systems, and change control workflows. Communication is another key element. The plan must include message templates, notification procedures, and a clear structure for the command center so that coordination is smooth during an event. On the exam, if a scenario mentions that no disaster recovery plan exists, it is often signaling a governance breakdown and a failure in control maturity. Identifying this absence is part of being control-aware.
Testing is not optional when it comes to disaster recovery—it is the only way to know if a plan actually works. There are several types of tests that organizations may use. A tabletop test is a discussion-based review. A simulation test involves walking through the plan without actual failover. A partial failover test switches specific components, while a full failover test moves everything to backup systems. These tests must be designed to match real recovery objectives like the defined RTO and RPO. Once testing is complete, the results must be documented and used to update the plan, especially if gaps are found. Critically, testing must not be limited to just the IT department. Business units must also participate so that system dependencies and data flows are fully understood. When a test question mentions that a recovery plan has never been tested, it is signaling a dormant risk where the organization has placed blind trust in an unverified strategy.
Recovery is not a one-person job. It involves a coordinated effort across several roles. IT operations teams are responsible for restoring infrastructure—this includes servers, storage, and network connectivity. Application teams must validate that services are functioning and that data is accurate. Business units must confirm that their most important processes are back online and communicate the business impacts up the chain. Risk and compliance teams have their own responsibilities, such as making sure documentation is complete and that all regulatory requirements are satisfied. Governance has a higher-level role that includes authorizing the activation of recovery plans, monitoring the status of the recovery, and analyzing what happened once the event is over. Each team plays a part, and the exam will test your understanding of who does what during the recovery process.
Disaster recovery does not stand alone. It must be integrated with the organization’s overall risk and continuity ecosystem. This means aligning disaster recovery efforts with business continuity plans to ensure that people, processes, and technology are all covered. It also means linking the recovery plan to the risk register and ensuring that identified risks have matching recovery capabilities. Disaster recovery must be connected to the security incident response plan as well, since many disruptions may originate from cyber incidents. How well the organization can recover affects how much risk remains, which directly shapes residual risk calculations. If disaster recovery capabilities are weak or unproven, then risk acceptance decisions may be based on faulty assumptions. Worse, failure in disaster recovery may result in regulatory violations, especially in highly governed industries. The exam will reward students who understand that disaster recovery is not just technical—it is strategic.
In modern environments, disaster recovery becomes more complex when systems are spread across cloud and hybrid architectures. While cloud platforms often include built-in redundancy and failover features, organizations must still plan how to use these features properly. One area of concern is data residency—knowing where data is stored and whether it can legally be recovered from that location. Service level agreements must also be reviewed carefully to ensure that vendors will meet recovery requirements. Testing across cloud and on-premises environments is essential, especially to verify that access controls remain effective during failover. As hybrid architectures evolve, disaster recovery strategies must be updated to reflect these changes. The exam may test your ability to recognize when an organization is relying too much on vendor capabilities without having its own plan in place. Knowing the difference between built-in redundancy and a managed recovery plan is essential.
When it comes to exam scenarios, disaster recovery shows up in very specific ways. You might be asked which system should be recovered first, and the correct answer will depend on system criticality and the associated RTO. Another type of question might ask what is missing from a recovery plan, and the best answer will usually involve testing, role clarity, or vendor contact information. You might also face a scenario where the disaster recovery plan failed, and you will need to identify the reason—common causes include outdated data, steps that were never tested, or missing system dependencies. Questions might also ask which control verifies recovery success, and valid answers could include log reviews, documented test results, or checks against secondary systems. The strongest exam answers will show that you understand timeliness, prioritization, stakeholder alignment, and that readiness must be proven, not assumed.
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