Every hour a critical system stays down costs an organisation money, trust, and sometimes both at once — which is exactly why IT disaster recovery planning has moved from a back-office checkbox to a board-level priority. This training course, delivered by the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy, walks participants through the complete lifecycle of preparing an organisation's technology infrastructure to survive and recover from disruptive events, from the first risk assessment to a fully tested, documented recovery plan.

Rather than treating disaster recovery as a one-off document, the course builds a working methodology: how to identify what could go wrong, how to measure the damage it would cause, and how to design backup, restoration, and communication procedures that hold up under real pressure. Case studies and structured exercises give attendees hands-on practice in building and stress-testing a recovery plan rather than just reading about one.

By the end of the programme, participants — whether IT professionals, business continuity planners, or anyone responsible for safeguarding technology infrastructure — leave with a practical framework for risk analysis, recovery plan design, and the metrics (like Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives) that keep a disaster from becoming a catastrophe.

What You'll Be Able to Do

• Understand the fundamentals of IT disaster recovery planning and the frameworks that support it.
• Identify risks, threats, and vulnerabilities affecting IT systems and data, and evaluate their potential impact on the organisation.
• Estimate the Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPD) and translate it into Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).
• Design and implement backup and recovery solutions, including data protection and backup measures.
• Develop mitigation and recovery strategies and plans tailored to different types of IT disasters.
• Establish communication and coordination protocols to be used during an IT disaster.
• Test and evaluate the effectiveness of disaster recovery plans on an ongoing basis.
• Review the asset, human, change, and supply chain management components that are specific to IT.
• Apply best practice for building resilient, secure IT infrastructure and sustainable operations.

Who Should Attend?

• IT professionals, managers, and team leaders
• Business continuity and security professionals
• System administrators
• Disaster recovery (DR) managers and anyone involved in DRP or BCP development
• Technology and IT auditors

Module 1: Why Disaster Recovery Can't Wait

• The business case for IT disaster recovery planning
• Risk and vulnerability factors that lead to IT disasters
• The real impact of downtime on business operations

Module 2: Measuring Risk and Business Impact

• Identifying risks, threats, and vulnerabilities to IT systems and data
• Conducting a business impact analysis (BIA) and identifying critical assets
• Estimating MTPD and setting Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives (RTO/RPO)

Module 3: Designing Recovery Solutions

• Backup and recovery solution design and implementation
• Building IT infrastructure resilience
• Evaluating cloud-based disaster recovery options

Module 4: Building and Documenting the Recovery Plan

• Creating and documenting an effective IT disaster recovery plan
• Defining roles, responsibilities, and communication protocols
• Aligning asset, human, change, and supply chain management with the plan

Module 5: Testing, Compliance, and Governance

• Methods for testing and evaluating plan effectiveness
• Continuous improvement and plan updates
• Legal, regulatory, and industry compliance requirements

Module 6: Applying the Plan in Real Scenarios

• Case studies from real IT disaster events
• Incident response and recovery execution
• Sustaining secure, resilient IT operations after recovery