Disasters aren’t always dramatic. They can start with a small oversight, a quick power outage, or a simple human mistake. But the ripple effect? It can be massive, especially if your business isn’t prepared to bounce back quickly. The good news is, most disaster-related damage can be minimized or even avoided entirely with the right recovery plan. The bad news? Many companies make the same preventable mistakes.
Let’s go over 10 common disaster recovery missteps, why they happen, and what you can do to avoid falling into the same traps.
1. Putting Off Disaster Recovery Planning
Disaster recovery is often treated like insurance, it’s something businesses know they should have, but keep postponing until it’s too late. If your recovery plan is collecting digital dust somewhere, you’re not alone. But a reactive approach rarely ends well. If your business experiences data loss or system failure, scrambling for solutions afterward will only make the situation worse.
Instead, treat recovery planning as an essential part of your business infrastructure—not an optional backup plan.
2. Overlooking Regular Risk Evaluations
Technology changes fast. New threats emerge constantly. So why do so many businesses still rely on outdated risk assessments? By skipping regular evaluations, you might miss vulnerabilities in your systems, processes, or vendors. This leaves your organization open to issues you didn’t even know existed.
Aim to review your risk exposure at least bi-annually. It’ll help you update your strategy before a threat becomes a disaster.
3. Failing to Test the Plan
Having a disaster recovery plan is a solid start. But if it’s never been tested in a real-world scenario or even a simulation, it’s just theoretical. Testing helps uncover weak spots in your process: outdated information, unclear responsibilities, or software that doesn’t restore properly. You don’t want to discover those things during a crisis.
Schedule regular mock drills. Include both IT and business teams so everyone knows their role when systems go down.
4. Keeping All Backups in One Place
Centralized backups might feel convenient, until that location becomes compromised. Whether it’s due to fire, flood, or a ransomware attack, relying on one storage point is a gamble. To protect your data, adopt a multi-location backup strategy. This includes storing backups in geographically separate areas or using cloud-based platforms with redundancy built in.
It’s like having a fire escape on every floor, you never want to rely on just one exit.
5. Underestimating the Price of Downtime
Downtime isn’t just about inconvenience, it can have a significant financial impact. Lost productivity, missed sales, and reputational damage can add up quickly. Surprisingly, many businesses don’t know what downtime costs them per hour. That lack of insight can lead to underinvestment in disaster recovery solutions.
Calculate your potential losses ahead of time. Once you see the numbers, investing in prevention will feel like a no-brainer.
6. Letting Plans Become Outdated
An outdated recovery plan can be just as dangerous as having no plan at all. Systems change, team members come and go, and software gets updated—so why keep using the same recovery manual? A stale plan may reference employees who no longer work with you, old system configurations, or irrelevant applications.
Make it a habit to revisit and revise your disaster recovery strategy every few months or whenever there’s a major change to your infrastructure.
7. Ignoring Cloud Tools and SaaS Platforms
Think your cloud providers have you covered? Not entirely. Many businesses assume their cloud-based software email, CRMs, file storage is automatically safe in a disaster scenario. In reality, most cloud vendors follow a shared responsibility model. They keep their infrastructure secure, but your data is still your responsibility.
Be sure to include cloud tools and SaaS apps in your recovery plan. Understand where your responsibilities start and end.
8. Lack of a Clear Communication Strategy
When an incident occurs, poor communication can cause even more chaos than the outage itself. Who do employees report to? How do customers get notified? What updates go to leadership? If you haven’t mapped this out ahead of time, people will waste valuable minutes or hours, trying to figure it out on the fly.
Set up clear communication workflows for different scenarios. Make sure everyone knows who to contact and how.
9. Assuming Small Businesses Don’t Need a Plan
There’s a dangerous belief that only big companies need disaster recovery strategies. But the truth is, smaller businesses often have more to lose, they’re less likely to bounce back from a major disruption. In fact, a single cyberattack or hardware failure can permanently shut down a small business. Without the budget to absorb losses, recovery is make-or-break.
No matter your size, a solid plan is essential. It could be the difference between staying open and closing your doors.
10. Using the Wrong Tools or Providers
Some businesses try to cobble together a DIY disaster recovery setup using outdated software or free tools. Others sign up with a provider that doesn’t scale with their growth.
The result? Long recovery times, missed data, or incomplete backups that don’t work when you need them most.
Modern businesses should consider flexible, cloud-based solutions like Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). These systems automate much of the heavy lifting and are designed for real-time response.
Disasters don’t announce themselves. And when they do hit, you want to be ready—not scrambling. Avoiding the common pitfalls above will make your disaster recovery efforts faster, more effective, and far less stressful.
Get a Smarter, Simpler Disaster Recovery Plan with eShare.ai
At eShare.ai, we help companies stay protected with intelligent, AI-powered Disaster Recovery as a Service solutions. Whether you’re looking to simplify backups, reduce your downtime, or protect critical data in the cloud, we’ve got you covered.
Don’t wait for something to go wrong—start your free disaster recovery assessment today at eShare.ai. Your future self will thank you.
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