How often should organizations run disaster recovery exercises?

A comprehensive annual tabletop exercise involving all stakeholders should be supplemented with smaller team-focused drills throughout the year. The most effective approach treats every operational incident as a learning opportunity to practice escalation paths and communication protocols, rather than waiting for scheduled exercises.

What are the most common gaps in recovery planning?

Organizations typically struggle with ensuring their documented plans reflect actual execution capabilities, establishing clear escalation and communication paths, and achieving cross-functional alignment between IT operations, security, and legal teams before incidents occur.

Why Clean Recovery Planning Happens Before the Crisis

Name: Why Clean Recovery Planning Happens Before the Crisis
Uploaded: 2026-03-20T17:03:16-04:00
Duration: 5 min 28 s
Description: TL;DR Recovery success depends on people, process, and technology working together, with many organizations over-focusing on backup technology while neglecting the human and procedural elements that determine real-world outcomes. Building muscle memory...

Veeam

03/20/2026

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TL;DR

Recovery success depends on people, process, and technology working together, with many organizations over-focusing on backup technology while neglecting the human and procedural elements that determine real-world outcomes.
Building muscle memory through regular practice is essential, requiring annual comprehensive tabletop exercises supplemented by smaller team drills and treating every operational incident as a learning opportunity.
Effective preparation means assembling escalation paths, communication protocols, and cross-functional alignment before an event occurs, not during the crisis when execution should be the only focus.

Summary

This tactical discussion between host Leah Troscianecki and Field CISO Raymond Umerley examines why effective disaster recovery depends on preparation rather than crisis response. The conversation emphasizes that while backup technology is critical, the people and process components often determine success or failure during actual incidents. Umerley draws on customer experience to explain how organizations struggle when recovery plans don't reflect real-world execution, lack clear escalation paths, or haven't been tested through repetition. The discussion advocates for building muscle memory through regular practice, including annual comprehensive tabletop exercises supplemented by smaller team-focused drills and learning from every operational incident. The core message positions recovery readiness as a strategic capability that builds executive trust and transforms IT operations from reactive firefighters into architects of organizational resilience.

Chapters

0:00 - Introduction to Clean Recovery Planning
0:25 - People, Process, and Technology Balance
1:30 - Building Muscle Memory Through Repetition
4:05 - Exercise Frequency and Micro-Events

Key Quotes

0:27 "I think a huge component of it is we have to remember, it's people, process, and technology. Because a lot of times when we're thinking about recovery, we're hyper-focused on the technology components of backup and restoration capabilities and so forth."
1:02 "You want to assemble that before an event. That's the last time, you don't want to assemble it during, you want to execute during the event itself."
4:43 "Don't let a good incident go to waste, doing the annual full-scale exercises, but also in between that, finding times for just the smaller team to maybe look at their portion or these two teams to talk together."

Categories:

» Data Protection » Backup & Recovery
» Data Protection

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