Challenges and Opportunities of Having an IT Disaster Recovery Plan

There are various types of disasters and no one can expect when they will occur. IT disaster recovery plan (ITDRP) became one of the most important contingency plans for organizations in the event of disasters. Organizations started realizing the importance of having IT Disaster recovery plan but many hesitate to apply this plan before a disaster occurs. However, even when the importance of ITDRP is acknowledged in the IS field, most scholarly work has focused on the process and strategies while briefly looking at the challenges and benefits of the DRP. This paper aims to investigate the most common challenges associated with having an effective ITDRP and the opportunities associated with this plan. A qualitative study was conducted which consists 6 interviews within several organizations which have developed an ITDRP. The results show that top management support, staff issues, maintenance, and disaster recovery sites are the main challenges organizations face during DRP. While the benefits were data protection, reducing the interruption for business functions, enhancing the reliability for staff and IT services and speeding up the decision-making process