Disaster Recovery Services & Response Solutions

Disaster recovery services help an organization prepare for and restore technology systems after an outage, cyber incident, infrastructure failure, or other disruption. They can include backup strategy, Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), cloud recovery design, redundant connectivity, failover testing, and vendor selection. The right approach defines which systems must return first, acceptable downtime, data-loss tolerance, responsibilities, and the recovery resources needed to meet those goals.

Backup creates copies of data that can be restored after deletion, corruption, or loss. Disaster recovery is the broader capability to restore applications, infrastructure, connectivity, and business operations after a major disruption. A backup may protect files but not provide a fast way to restart critical systems. Effective recovery planning connects backups to recovery objectives, failover procedures, dependencies, testing, and accountable owners.

Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service, or DRaaS, uses a provider’s cloud infrastructure and tools to replicate workloads or data and support recovery after an outage. Depending on the design, teams can fail over selected applications or entire environments to a secondary platform. A sound DRaaS evaluation considers recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives, replication methods, application dependencies, testing frequency, security, support, and total cost.

A recovery time objective (RTO) is the maximum acceptable time a system can be unavailable. A recovery point objective (RPO) is the maximum acceptable amount of data loss, measured in time. Start by identifying critical applications, downstream dependencies, financial or operational impact, and compliance requirements. Then prioritize systems by urgency and select backup, replication, and failover capabilities that can realistically meet each target.

A disaster recovery plan should be tested on a regular schedule and after meaningful changes to applications, infrastructure, vendors, or business processes. Testing can range from tabletop exercises to technical restore tests and controlled failover simulations. Each exercise should document results, gaps, recovery timing, ownership, and corrective actions. Regular testing confirms that documented procedures, access, backups, and provider commitments work under realistic conditions.

Sabertooth Advisory provides independent guidance across assessments, recovery strategy, DRaaS, backup, cloud, colocation, connectivity, security, provider evaluation, and contract negotiation. The team helps clarify requirements and compare options using consistent criteria such as capability, SLA, support quality, risk, and total cost. With access to 300+ suppliers, Sabertooth can create a competitive, vendor-neutral selection process without charging clients an advisory fee.

Review recovery commitments beyond headline availability claims. Important contract details include recovery time and recovery point objectives, support response expectations, testing rights, service credits, chronic-failure clauses, data ownership, security responsibilities, change-control procedures, implementation scope, price escalators, renewal terms, and exit provisions. A clear contract should define what happens during a declared disaster and identify responsibilities for both the provider and your internal team.

Yes. Recovery planning can support compliance by documenting risk controls, data protection measures, continuity procedures, access controls, testing evidence, and vendor accountability. Requirements vary by organization and framework, but recovery decisions should be evaluated alongside obligations such as HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, PCI-DSS, and CMMC. Sabertooth Advisory can help align technology and supplier evaluations with applicable compliance considerations.