DRPs reduce risk by reducing the impact of disasters. The disaster, such as an earthquake, a tornado, or a hurricane, is the threat, which can’t be stopped. However, the impact of the threat can be reduced by being prepared, and the DRP helps with this preparation to mitigate both the short- and long-term damage.

For example, the DRP can help reduce the length of an outage after a disaster. Organizations that have a DRP in place are able to handle disasters much more easily than organizations without DRPs. Of course, the existence of a DRP doesn’t guarantee success.

With a disaster recovery plan, the company will be much better prepared to recover CBFs. A cold site takes a lot of work to put together in its planning stage. All the equipment must be moved, set up, and configured. With some extra resources and preplanning, the company could plan to use a warm site. However, with no planning, the job will be twice as hard.

In addition to being more difficult to recover without a DRP, more errors and problems will be experienced. The DRP helps with applying critical thinking to problems before they occur and encourages logical thinking about what should be done to minimize them. Experts can be consulted to help with solving problems, and the plan can be tested. Without a DRP, the company will be thrown into the middle of a crisis without any of these benefits. With luck, the disaster won’t destroy the business. However, most executives don’t want to depend on luck.